Slavs and Tatars

Slavs and Tatars
Kidnapping Mountains

Su 26 April 2009 14:00 (Opening exhibition)
Su 26 April → Sa 13 June 2009

Keep your majorities close but your minorities Closer.

Slavs and Tatars (“Slaves and Tarts”) is a collective consisting of Victoria Camblin, Kasia Korczak, Payam Sharifi and Boy Vereecken, that responds to a mental environment that extends from the former Iron Curtain to the Great Wall of China: the romanticised but often-neglected atmosphere of exchange between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. With a malicious sense of humour and polemic they make a play on often Western-oriented cultural registers (design, art, fashion, politics, publicity) and thus formulate a kaleiscopic alternative to the reduction processes in the popular media. At the same time, they avoid long exegetische debates about language and identity: their typical attitude surpasses many faults in the region, including multi-faceted actions of infiltration, striking one-liners and references to significant digressions from history. The overall picture thus developed can be simply described as a vibrant mosaic of brutal ideas and romantic polemics (or vice versa).
Kidnapping Mountains, their exhibition in Network, focuses specifically on the Caucasus and is accompanied by a publication in which research and creation merge seamlessly into one another. The book will be presented at the opening of the exhibition and will be further explained by Kasia Korczak during the event Form Follows F***tion 2.

Netwerk / centrum voor hedendaagse kunst
Houtkaai, B-9300 Aalst, België
http://www.netwerk-art.be