The Contest of the Fruits is a nineteenth-century allegorical text, written in Uighur, that captures the possibilities of boundary crossings to cultivate understanding, tolerance, and identity in a pluralistic world. Berlin based art collective Slavs and Tatars will bring this text to life through an array of activities that will bend borders, tickle tongues, and fracture fixed identities. This virtual program is part of an extended project including an artist residency, film premiere, exhibition at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, and a publication. 

Slavs and Tatars is an internationally-renowned art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications and lecture-performances.

In collaboration with Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, Twelve Gates Arts, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Philadelphia), Slavs and Tatars will present a virtual event series,  The Contest in Context: A Virtual Program on Poetry, Allegory, and Uighur Language Politics, offering a deeper dive into the project’s core themes. 

The Contest of the Fruits is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.