Slavs and Tatars: The Contest of the Fruits at esea contemporary

esea contemporary presents the first UK institutional solo show by Slavs and Tatars. The Contest of the Fruits is the debut film from the internationally acclaimed collective, tackling hard-hitting themes such as politics, language, and religion but infused with a dose of humour.

The Contest of the Fruits is based on a 19th-century Uighur poem, reimagined as an animated rap battle.

The collective worked with Uighur diaspora rapper Nash Tarr and and Polish musician Lubomir Grzelak (aka Lutto Lento) on the soundtrack. The film itself is a rap battle between 13 fruits, with the characteristics and physiognomy of each ones shaped by its Uighur name, in Arabic calligraphy. Think, a cartoon fig wearing a gold chain rapping the words: “I’m powerful and muscular, my fruity flesh corpuscular.”

The exhibition extends into the first room of the gallery where you’ll find Simurgh Self-Help. This section features a turban-shaped lamp, a table with nail designs (the collective invited a local nail artist to paint visitors’ nails on the opening night) while the walls are covered in pink wallpaper, patterned with colourful hands which translate ‘Simurgh’ – a Sufi symbol of rebirth – into international sign language. The show is accompanied by a book of essays too, which provides some necessary context for the concepts behind the work.

Slavs and Tatars is a collective founded in 2006, “devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia”. Geography often serves as a starting point for their works, which explore popular culture, history, and tradition, always with humour at the core. Their practice spans three main activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances.