Slavs and Tatars worked with each space and their artists to present existing and new work that together forms a collective exhibition through a ‘regime of portraiture’, including faces, places and traces from mid-twentieth-century painting to contemporary drawings and sculptures.

At the fair, Marker took the form of a chaikhaneh or Eurasian (tea) salon, to activate each work as a point of departure, to tell larger stories touching upon questions of faith, language, landscape; and importantly, how these notions are ritualised, interiorised, and hybridised beyond the often brittle politics of identity.

Slavs and Tatars is a collective with solo exhibitions at major museums—MoMA, Secession (2012), REDCAT (2013), Kunsthalle Zurich, Dallas Museum of Art (2014)—as well as group exhibitions across the Middle East, North America and Europe. They have published six books, including a translation of the legendary Azeri political satire Molla Nasreddin (2011, JRP-Ringier).

Slavs and Tatars are represented by The Third Line, Dubai; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; and Raster, Warsaw.

Slavs and Tatars would like to thank Leeza Ahmady, Laura Bulian, Ayatgali Tuleubek and the Central Asian Pavilion, Venice 2013 team, and The Third Line.