Slavs and Tatars

szpagat

The Splits (Gold), 2015, gilded bronze, 11 × 28 × 5.6 cm

The Polish–American arts collective Slavs and Tatars is engaged in what they describe as researching “cultural identity between the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China”. This sculpture represents linguistic division, and may refer to the psychological sense that language is “betraying” us and cannot express what we mean to say, as well as to more general circumstances which prove that we are in a culturally split state. Slavs and Tatars’ work also implies that, in some historical situations, certain things may determine cultural wealth, while in other situations they would be considered threatening.

Slavs and Tatars (founded in 2006) – collective founded by two young artists: a Pole living in Tel Aviv and an American of Iranian origin living in Paris. Over the years, they were joined by artists from around the world to work together in the “region known as Eurasia, located east of the Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China”.