05 Dec 2011

KIOSK presents Slavs and Tatars and Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan

SLAVS AND TATARS, AND LONNIE VAN BRUMMELEN & SIEBREN DE HAAN EXHIBITION OPENING

Opening: 09.12.2011, 8PM
Exhibition: 10.12.2011 – 22.01.2012

The upcoming exhibition at KIOSK shows work of international artist collective Slavs and Tatars and of Dutch duo Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan. Both ground their artistic practice in research and explore the interactions between the historical, the social and the political by way of association.

Slavs and Tatars
By their own account, the artist collective Slavs and Tatars has, since its inception in 2005, been mapping an area that stretches between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China. They focus on an often overseen cultural overlap between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians and humorously but polemically disrupt a univocal Western interpretation. The installations, performances, lectures and print publications that make up these alternative spheres of influence, form a playful mosaic of associations combining elements from a spectrum of high and low culture.

At KIOSK, Slavs and Tatars present a number of works under the collective title 'Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz'. The solo show is in part an elaboration of the project of the same name they presented at the tenth Sharjah Biennial earlier this year. The multimedia 'Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz' shows the unlikely common history of Iran and Poland. The revolutionary potential of handiwork and folklore is shown to have been the impulse gearing two crucial events that have in turn set in motion a string of recent geopolitical evolutions: the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the fall of Communism in 1989 heralded by the Polish Solidarność. This subject was first explored in the '79.89.09'. project that consisted of a series of lectures, a newspaper edition that is being reprinted for the KIOSK show, and the mirror mosaic 'Resist Resisting God' (2010) that is also on display at KIOSK. Further, the central dome room will be taken in by a series of colourful sewn banners boasting re-interpreted, creolized slogans from the Iranian Revolution and the Solidarność movement.

Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan
The adjoining room at KIOSK becomes a projection space for the film diptych 'Subi dura a rudibus' (16mm, 26', 2010) by the Dutch artist duo Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan. The inspiration for their silent film is a sixteenth-century series of tapestries depicting the 1535 conquest of Tunis under Charles V. The tapestries were designed by Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen, a painter at the Habsburg court who accompanied the troops of Charles V as an 'embedded artist' appointed to make drawings of the expedition.
The film shows the drawn designs mirrored and juxtaposed to the tapestries. The diptych refers to the tension between objectivity and interpretation: the mirror images recall the well-known inkblots of the psychological Rorschach test and confront us with the differences between the original drawings and the tapestry weaver's translation of them.

As part of the exhibitions, KIOSK presents a programme of lectures, debates and a performance. More information on this will be published shortly on our website: www.kioskgallery.be.