Noblesse Oblige (sunflower)

Slavs and Tatars’ work often mixes registers of high and low, high-​brow ideologies and low-​brow media (pic­kles to bal­loons). In that vein, roasted sun­flower seeds are a staple snack, shared across the Slavic-​Turkic peoples from Eastern Europe to Cen­tral Asia. Like the wheat of Wheat Mollah, the sun­flower seed becomes a symbol of proletariat or rather, its 21st cen­tury suces­sor, the précariat. 

Qatalogue

The Inrising

The mythical Per­sian bird replaced the Polish royal eagle in a symbol of solidarity.

Naughty Nasals

The Rus­sian Cyril­lization of Polish was introduced in the Rus­sian par­tition in the nineteenth cen­tury. Two Polish let­ters in par­ticular were problematic: the “ą” and the “ę.” These nasals had disap­peared from
most other Slavic lan­guages. The solution came via let­ters from the Old Slavonic lan­guage, Ѫѫ (big yus) and Ѧѧ (little yus): Naughty Nasals under­line the affront of Orthodox- Cyril­lic on a Catholic-​Latin iden­tity. Slavs and Tatars have trans­for­med
the let­ters into fur­niture resem­bling por­table con­fes­sion booths.

Pavement Prose: Język lata jak łopata

The shovel, as the cen­trepiece of the Towarzystwo Szubrawców logo, is used to parody the parasitism of the nobility who rides it like a witch.

Figa

An obscene hand gesture specific to Turkic and Slavic cul­tures, “Figa” revisits the old Egyp­tian proverb: “Life is like a cucum­ber: one day in your hand and one day in your ass.”

Hammer and Nipple

Whether in North America, Europe, the Middle East or Asia, we’re increasin­gly sour on power.

Pan Chrzan

Pan Chrzan is the main hero of Slavs and Tatars’ body of work on Pickle Politics.

Vacuums

The conver­sion of a lan­guage from one script to another is a routine act of alphabet penitence. The reason we do so hurriedly—with a dose of chagrin, hol­ding our noses, on the back of a scrap of paper—stems in part from transliteration’s maligned status. One thing is clear: trans­lation it is not. Alas, trans­literation is the trashier youn­ger sibling of trans­lation, its more prestigious, older sister.

Hung and Tart

Hung and Tart features a heart that becomes a tongue, enac­ting a synap­sis, or short cut between the con­cep­tion of speech, sym­bolic and sin­cere, and its delivery.

Irokez

The daily taming of hair is an act of civilization, bat­tling the frizzy and curly unruliness of the body.

AÂ AÂ AÂ UR

AÂ AÂ AÂ UR is the original ancient Egyp­tian demotic text, meaning literally “big, big, very big”, from which the Greeks conceived/translated the name of Hermes Trismegistis (Thrice Great), the author/ foun­der of Her­meticism, an esoteric body of know­ledge that speaks to the great tradition of inter­faith dialogue and mysticism.

Ezan Çılgıŋŋŋŋŋları

Prepared for and first exhibited during 8th Berlin Bien­nale, Ezan Çılgıŋŋŋŋŋları con­sists of two out­sized speakers set up in the form of a rahlé (or stand for holy books) onto which visitors were invited to sit, lie down, relax and reflect.

Larry nixed, Trachea trixed

Larry nixed, Trachea trixed looks at various attempts to Cyril­licize sounds or phonemes that did not previously exist in the Rus­sian Cyril­lic alphabet, one of many attempts to extend or embed Soviet influence.

Lahestan Nesfeh Jahan

Lahestan Nesfeh Jahan (literally, “Poland, Half the World”) com­memorates the for­got­ten World War II episode of Polish refugees to Iran when Esfahan came to be known as the City of Polish Chil­dren. The text is a revision of the city’s legen­dary slogan, per­haps one of the most famous in Per­sian, “Esfahan Nesfeh Jahan” (“Esfahan, Half the World”).

Bandari String Fingerling

The daily taming of hair is an act of civilization, bat­tling the unruliness of the body. In this sense the rituals of daily existence, such as com­bing one’s hair, echo as objects the coun­sel of the Mir­rors for Prin­ces genre.

Swinging Septum

Long eclip­sed by the mouth, as source of libidinal lin­guistics, Swin­ging Septum restores the nose as an equally discur­sive and desirous organ of lan­guage. A flat sil­houette nose sways from left to right, evocative of the facial acrobatics the septum must per­form to reach the sonorous heights of /ɛ/ or /ɔ̃/.

Tongue Twist Her

The pole exchan­ges its topless dancer for something no less racy: a giant, fleshy tongue twir­ling around and down the pole, a nod to the 60 odd years of chan­ges in parts of the former-​Soviet, Tur­kophone world from Arabic to Latin to Cyril­lic back to Latin.

Madame MMMorphologie

Standing tall book greets its visitors as a madame. A love story come to life, Madame MMMor­phologie winks at her pas­sersby, her long eyelashes linked to the quasi-​illicit amorous rap­port the book can compel in people.

Love Letters

Love Let­ters series of car­pets address the issue of manipulation of alphabets across Arabic, Latin and Cyril­lic, through the Rus­sian Revolution’s most well-​known, if con­flic­ted, poet-​champion, Vladimir Mayakovsky.