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. The Contest of the Fruits is a nineteenth-century allegorical text, written in Uyghur, that captures the possibilities of boundary crossings to cultivate understanding, tolerance, and identity in a pluralistic world.
The Contest of the Fruits project will consist of an array of activities with Slavs and Tatars through fall 2021 that will explore physical and cultural borders, heritage, and identity through an extended artist residency, animated film, an exhibition at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, public programs, and a publication.
The Contest of the Fruits is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.
Support for The Contest of the Fruits is also provided by the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities’ Hillmann Moving Image Endowed Fund, the Kessinger Family Fund for Asian Performing Arts, the House Fund for Visiting Artists and Critics, and the Office of the Provost.