The Eurasian art collective reimagines symbols of power through forgotten myths. As their recent Simurgh Self-Help exhibition at Warsaw’s Raster Gallery demonstrates, Slavs and Tatars are intent on translating not only languages but entire cultural narratives—from Persian epics to Soviet-altered alphabets—into tools for critique, humor, and healing.
It’s what you’d expect from a member of the linguistically inclined, rhizomatic organism that is Slavs and Tatars, a platform he co-founded with partner Kasia Korczak. Alongside collaborators Stan de Natris, and Pickle Bar directors Anastasia Marukhina and Patricia Couvet, the collective focuses on the geographical region the group famously refers to as the area “east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China.” Since its inception in 2006, Slavs and Tatars has published several books, presented numerous solo exhibitions and lecture-performances, and participated in countless group shows. They’ve shown their work in major institutions in New York, London, Paris, São Paulo, Gwangju, Abu Dhabi, as well as all across their focus region, like the Georgian city of Tbilisi and Azerbaijan’s capital Baku in the Caucasus. Slavs and Tatars’ eclectic and esoteric purview encompasses a wide range of topics, from the unlikely connections between the Iranian Revolution and the Polish Solidarity movement to the cross-cultural reach of the Turkic-Persian myth of the Simurgh.
“It’s considered to be a bird which has seen the destruction of the world three times over,” explains Sharifi, about the phoenix-like namesake of Slavs and Tatars’ recent Simurgh Self-Help exhibition at Warsaw’s Raster Gallery. “It only
