East, West, Occident, Orient, Europe, Asia… it’s enough to make the most enthusiastic amongst us yawn. For Art Basel Statements, we are proud to present Régions d’etre: a playful look at a climate of being. Too often the region is portrayed through the exclusively dour and dark lens of political and social upheaval. Our story is not one of distinct continents or even a region but rather the unexpectedly merry romp of the forest meeting the steppe.
A jungle gym for children and adults alike, Régions d’etre celebrates the pluralist and lateral approach to identity found across Slavs and Tatars’ work. Literally “a region of being,” Régions d’etre embeds a cheerful complexity to the otherwise innocuous medium of playground architecture. The work goes to the very origins of the artists’ practice: by choosing to lodge themselves between an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China.
