Slavs and Tatars: The Bacteria Bar is a multimedia visual arts exhibition and community space that critiques the politics of “The Other” in globalized Eurocentric society. Combining installation, printmaking, and performance, The Bacteria Bar generates constructive conversations among diverse communities at a time when exclusivist claims to national heritage rage in the United States and abroad. Slavs and Tatars have long been interested in fermentation as a way to question our assumptions about topics as diverse as identity, reason, and history. The Bacteria Bar greets the Philadelphia public in the form of an Ayran-machine: serving ayran, a Turkish fermented yogurt beverage, amidst several works from the collective.
The Contest of the Fruits is a collaboration between The Hurford Center for Arts and Humanities at Haverford College, renowned art collective Slavs and Tatars, and local arts and cultural organizations, including Twelve Gates. The project takes a nineteenth-century Uyghur allegorical poem as the point of departure for investigations into language, politics, religion, humor, resilience, and resistance in a pluralistic world. It includes a virtual series, publication, new animated film, and exhibition at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery by renowned artist collective Slavs and Tatars.
Slavs and Tatars are a renowned international artist collective whose members hail from Poland, Iran, and beyond. The artists' robust practice—extensive publications, exhibitions, and lectures—combines scholarly research and humor to investigate a region they define as "between the former Berlin wall and the Great Wall of China." They have exhibited in leading museums across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, including MoMA, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and SALT, Istanbul. Their public lectures have been presented at universities such as Stanford, UCLA, Princeton, Texas, Warsaw, and Oxford. As a collective they witness the vibrancy of artistic border crossings
Please join us for the Bacteria Bar opening reception & exhibition for The Contest of the Fruits on Friday, 10/15 at 5:30 PM ET in the gallery. RSVP here.
The Contest of the Fruits was created in collaboration with The John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, Slavs and Tatars, Guangtian Ha, CAIR Philly, and Twelve Gates Arts and is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.