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Slavs and Tatars

Mountains of Wit, 2009
wall application; dimensions variable
Last of the Eurasianists, 2008
screenprint on paper; 100×70 cm
Kidnapping Mountains (Over-Here), 2009
screenprint on paper; 176×120 cm


Mountains of Wit is a wall piece that continues Slavs and Tatars’ interest in language play and pseudo-Freudian slips. Горе от Ума (or Gore ot Uma, meaning “Woe from Wit”) is a famous nineteenth-century play about Moscow manners by Aleksander Griboyedov, a close friend of Pushkin’s and a diplomat to the Tsar in the Caucasus. By changing the ‘e’ in the original Russian title to an ‘ы’, a quintessentially Russian letter, the title becomes Mountains of Wit, and the urban premise of the original work is hijacked by a Caucasian setting that is equally imaginative and apposite. It’s also a setting that played an influential role in Griboyedov’s life and death. The emissary was stationed in modern-day Georgia, at the fringe of the Russian empire. Both geographical distance and the rugged mythology of the mountains are emblems of an Outland.


Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to Eurasia: the area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances. In addition to their translation of the legendary Azerbaijani satirical periodical Molla Nasreddin (currently in its second edition with I. B Tauris), Slavs and Tatars have published ten books to date, including most recently Wripped Scripped (Hatje Cantz, 2018), a book on alphabet politics and transliteration. Established as a reading group in 2006, their sculptural and installation practice has its roots in the transcription of oral traditions into written texts.

Artist’s website: slavsandtatars.com