The curatorial collective Slavs and Tatars, in collaboration with Michał Grzegorzek, are the curators of this year’s Survival Kit festival programme. Slavs and Tatars is a faction devoted to polemics and intimacy, working in the territory between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China – the so-called Eurasia. The collective’s practice is built on three main activities: exhibitions, books, and lecture-performances. Their works have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kunsthalle Zürich, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, and many other places. The theme chosen for the Survival Kit festival, The House of Simurgh, is based on the figure of Simurgh – a mythical bird found in folklore and religion from Iran to Ukraine, also connected to the tradition of Islamic Sufism.

Slavs and Tatars curator Payam Sharifi is in conversation with Survival Kit public programme curator Evarts Melnalksnis. The conversation took place at the VV Foundation’s PAiR artist residency in Pāvilosta, where Slavs and Tatars stayed in August.

Payam, we previously talked about your Persian roots, your life in the US, and your studies in Russia. How has your background shaped your worldview and artistic practice?

My parents are from Iran, but I studied in St. Petersburg and worked in Moscow. One thing that was particularly significant for me is the fact that Iran and Russia were opponents for two hundred years. Much of what the Russian Empire conquered while moving south into the Caucasus and Central Asia happened at Persia’s expense. Yet, in the 20th century and today, Russia and Iran barely look at each other, barely study one another, show almost no mutual interest. Both countries are so focused on the West that they almost ignore one another. Of course, there are geopolitical alliances, but at the human level – in political, intellectual, and commercial circles – there are almost no relations.

This blind spot has strongly influenced the work of Slavs and Tatars. One of our core principles is to do what others don’t. That’s why, for example, in 20 years we have never looked at Iran or Russia in isolation. That doesn’t interest us, because they are large countries with well-documented, well-researched histories. We are interested in the spaces between great powers and grand narratives, which often remain overlooked – the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern European countries, and certain traditions. The in-between has always been far more interesting than traditional centres.

What have you discovered in these in-between spaces?

Nowadays, when speaking about the Muslim world both in the West and among Muslims themselves, the acronym MENASA is often used: Middle East, North Africa, South Asia. Here, the exclusion of Central Asia and the Caucasus is obvious. MENASA does not include Bukhara, Samarkand, or Baku, which have been some of the most significant centres of learning in Muslim history, and that is a huge omission.

Today I would gladly describe our region with the internet meme of a Venn diagram: our region doesn’t fit into any of the circles; it remains outside. It is predominantly Turkic, but it has never been under Ottoman rule, rather under the Russian Empire. Because of colonialism, it predominantly speaks Russian. It is a Muslim region, but not in the Middle East. It is located in Asia, but has never been under Chinese rule (except Xinjiang). It does not fit into any category – and that is precisely what makes it interesting.

It is exactly at the peripheries where the most engaging things happen – where languages, traditions, and rituals blend. I believe that centres, whether Moscow, Paris, or London, are corrupted.

Curator Kasia Korczak comes from Poland. How does this background influence her perspective in the “Slavs and Tatars” collective?

We met Kasia in London in the early 2000s. One of the things that drew us to working together was the idea that, no matter how grateful we may be for the opportunities given to us by Western educational and cultural institutions, it is not enough. The horizons of knowledge, even the canons of knowledge within them, are far too narrow.

You studied in Germany – and on a global scale, Germany’s art infrastructure is enviable. Every small town has a great kunsthalle, an art association, public theatres, a highly educated public. Museum collections in Bremen, Bielefeld, Krefeld are wonderful, but essentially consist of artists between the Rhine region and New York. That is very narrow. And this narrowness – not only in art, but intellectually – was the stimulus for “Slavs and Tatars” to expand boundaries, to explore things not taught at universities. Not because of conspiracy, but because of lazy thinking. No matter whether you are in Riga, Tehran, or Jakarta, philosophy and humanities departments teach the same thing. There should be as many types of knowledge as there are places of knowledge, not one consolidated, homogeneous outlook.

So you met in London and began your research there?

We began by making publications, without even thinking of becoming artists – simply publishing a couple of books a year. And it was the art world that invited us in. At first it was very modest – zines, brochures with very small budgets. But soon they became books, and the first publishers were art publishing houses, even if the content of our publications wasn’t always artistic.

For example, the translation of Mullah Nasruddin – early 20th-century Azerbaijani satire – could have been an academic or a general-public edition, but it became an art book. I think that proves that art – no matter how much we criticise its environment and institutions – always questions itself, and that is wonderful. The same cannot be said of the literary field. The contemporary novel has become an industry with hardly any experimentation in format. Looking at ourselves – we weren’t considered artists at first, but now what we do is considered art.

Since Russia’s war in Ukraine, the name “Slavs and Tatars” has acquired a new context. How do you see this, and how have these recent geopolitical processes influenced your work?

Our name, if I may be modest, is our best work. Firstly, “Tatars” is a generalising, orientalist label that Western travellers used in Eastern Europe and Eurasia when they didn’t know where someone was from. They knew Eastern Europeans, but the only brown people they recognised in this region were Turks, Persians, Armenians, and Georgians. Everyone else brown was called Tatar: Dagestanis, Uzbeks, and others. So it is an orientalist, racist term. At the same time, “Tatar” is also a real ethnonym, isn’t it?

But it gets even more complicated: there are two kinds of Tatars – Crimean Tatars and Volga Tatars. They are not related, they are completely different ethnic groups, yet they use the same ethnonym. And so our name exists on the boundary between fiction and reality, between insult and self-pride.

Now, to the second part of the question – the war. For more than 15 years, while organising exhibitions, museum directors and teams sometimes said with interest and a certain arrogance: “Your region is in conflict!” I always objected: our region, for most of its history, has not been in conflict! People in our region have lived in peace much longer than in Western Europe. Western Europe essentially had no peace for a thousand years up to this century. Yet orientalism was projected onto us: “It must be dangerous there!”

Unfortunately, with this war, with events in Belarus before it, with what is happening in Kazakhstan, with what is happening between Azerbaijan and Armenia, I must admit that our region is currently very unstable. Russia’s war in Ukraine has intensified certain fears. Of course, the central issue is Ukraine’s self-determination, but everyone else in the region is watching what the outcome of this war will be. It is a world-changing event.

Dagestan, Chechnya and other peoples remain under Russian imperial rule. These regions are connected to the mythical bird Simurgh. How did you arrive at this image, and why is it important to you? You have worked with it for a long time in various projects.

Let me take a step back: in our artistic practice we not only avoid focusing on large states like Iran and Russia, we are not interested in states as such. Even when people use dual identities, such as: “I am Pakistani British, you are Latvian Belgian.” To me that feels like a 19th-century approach to identity and nationalism, not even 20th-century.

What has this war done? It has accelerated processes of decolonisation, and post-Soviet states are investing ever more resources into their languages. For example, in Central Asia people increasingly speak their own languages rather than Russian. Decolonisation also means that public space is finally being rid of Lenin and Stalin symbols, which had survived in many places, especially in Ukraine. This is a very important process of self-determination. But the problem is that today there is very little willingness to search for what unites us in this region. How can we find common ground without referring to top-down, Moscow-centred solutions? We believe that, regardless of what happened in the 20th century, there are shared traits between the Baltics, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. This region has certain commonalities that come from below, from folklore. For example, fermentation – milk fermentation, from the Mongols to kefir in Eastern Europe; or wheat, wheat festivals and decorations that we see here and that also appear in Ukraine (Dazhynki), in Poland (Dożynki).

Simurgh is another example. This bird is well known in Turkic and Persianate cultural spaces. To clarify: “Persianate” does not mean Iran, but rather countries where Persian is spoken: half of Uzbekistan, all of Tajikistan, half of Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Across this entire region the mythical bird Simurgh exists, which can only be seen when reaching a heightened state of spirituality or consciousness. It is similar to nirvana: when you have cancelled your ego, destroyed the “I,” then you can reach this bird.

The story from The Conference of the Birds is very beautiful. It is an important 12th-century Persian epic (written in verse) about birds searching for the Simurgh. There is the parrot, the hoopoe, the crane, and other birds. Over the course of 700 pages some of the birds fall away from the goal – some are too lazy, others too proud, too selfish, some too tired. And in the end only 30 birds arrive at the palace courtyard where Simurgh supposedly resides. They enter, but there is no Simurgh – there is only a pool with the reflections of 30 birds.

And that is Sufism: the search for the transcendent or divine not outside, but within yourself. But it is revealed only when you are together with others – it is a collective practice. The author Attar ends the epic with a pun, because in Persian “Simurgh” means “30 birds” – sim means “30,” murgh means “bird.” So this very elevated, serious poetics he finishes with a joke – a kind of ba-dum-tss after 700 pages. Such mixing of the high and the low is extremely rare. Imagine if at the end of The Odyssey there was a joke…

We arrived at Simurgh a few years ago when we began to use it as a curatorial premise. We realised that Simurgh is present everywhere in our region – in Turkic, Kurdish, Azeri, Uzbek, Persian, Iranian cultures. The westernmost example of Simurgh we found was in Chernihiv, Ukraine. There it is known as Semargl, part of the pre-Christian Slavic pantheon. This also included the goddess Makosh (a river), a forest god, and Semargl, which most researchers consider a continuation of Simurgh.

Simurgh is often depicted with a flaming tail, its gender is fluid. We found it interesting to compare it with the eagle. The eagle is a Western symbol, Simurgh is an Eastern symbol. The eagle is on the coats of arms of Germany, the US, Albania, Poland. It is always muscular, masculine, heterosexual. Simurgh is the opposite – with a fluid gender, flaming, refined. Flowing extravagance, a complete opposite of the eagle, the muscular football player. The eagle symbolises this world, the secular, the national. Simurgh symbolises the next world, the metaphysical.

Can you explain what Sufis are and how this relates to Islam?

Many mistakenly think that Sufism is a separate form of Islam, but it is not. It is the mystical practice of Islam. The essence of Sufism is that you do not need an intermediary in the form of organised religious structures. Of course, there are brotherhoods or orders, one of the largest and most important being the Naqshbandi. But for the most part Sufism is about direct relations between the divine and oneself. What many know of Sufism is often linked to Rumi, poetry, and the idea of inebriation. But this inebriation does not always mean drinking wine – it can mean intoxication by ecstasy, divine awareness, a state of spiritual rapture. That is Sufism.

At the time when Attar was writing, this was considered heresy – he had to leave his home, because such an interpretation of Islam was not tolerated.

Sufism has always been a challenge, because it exists outside power structures. We were recently in Senegal, and it is one of the few places where Sufism is official. There the largest mosques and main organisations are led by Sufis.

In the “Survival Kit” catalogue you write that Islam has had a significant impact on Eastern European culture.

Yes, for a very simple reason – many of the myths underpinning Eastern European narratives of themselves derive from the construction of the “Other,” and this “Other” was the Muslim. For example, in Christianity or for Hungarians in battles at Vienna, it was the Turk. Another myth is the “Tatar yoke” in Kievan Rus’ – but in fact there were far more periods of partnership than of conflict. So the very idea of the enemy is a myth. And it is important to mention this specifically in the Eastern European context, because Eastern Europe is somehow “excused” from having to confront Islam. The West must reckon with Islam because of its former colonies, but Eastern Europeans are somehow allowed not to, to perceive it as entirely foreign. And I think this is forgiven too easily.

Indeed – if you ask me to think of Islam and its impact on Latvian culture, it is hard to find connections. Which Eastern Europe do you mean when you write about Eastern Europe and its links to Islam? That is an interesting question. Where does it begin and end? Perhaps you mean the Balkans, because when I listen to music from this region, I do hear how Islamic, Turkish, and African musical elements mix – they intertwine in songs that still sound quite European.

I do not mean only the Balkans. In fact, Southern Europe, the South Slavs, is one of the regions we have worked with least. I mean, for example, things like Tatar influence on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Not only because there are Tatar mosques in Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland, but also because in the 17th century there were more Muslim deputies in the Polish-Lithuanian parliament than in any European country today.

Also, relations with Byzantium and Constantinople have always been very important. Not for all parts of the Baltics, but for some definitely. Another less direct connection is the Teutonic Knights, who in the Crusades encountered the “Eastern” idea in various ways.

Were there any contexts you paid particular attention to when thinking about Simurgh in Riga?

The role of birds as bearers of spiritual meaning is found all over the world, also in the Baltics and Latvia, for example in the “bird wedding” ritual. This point of contact was important for us as a starting point. I am not sure if these contact points are direct, but what has always seemed essential to us and resonates throughout our region, where empires and ideologies meet, is the ability to contain other things within oneself. You can really feel it here – for example, in the approach to Christianity, which includes pre-Christian, pagan rituals. I like that in this syncretism, by including something pre-Christian in Christianity or something pre-Islamic in Islam, not only space is disrupted but also time. You take something from an earlier chronology and insert it into your own chronology. It is layered time, layered space. For example, Muslims in Central Asia, when going to Sufis, pray at tree trunks. This is a very Buddhist practice. Official Islam looks unfavourably on it. In Latvia this syncretism is strongly felt. And this is one of the few such places in the Western world, because in my view Latvia is now the Western world. As soon as people urbanise, they lose this. In the Baltics it has not yet happened to such a great extent.

The works of Latvian artist Inese Jakobi are included in “Survival Kit.” Textiles in contemporary art are becoming increasingly relevant overall. Can you comment on this?

We are living in a very significant art moment: art is being pulled in two different directions. One direction is art as an autonomous space – this is the traditional understanding of art. The most important thing is the work, it has no function, no social role, except transformation, elevation. But at the same time, in the last ten years we also see art moving towards social activism. Art is instrumentalised: it must do something, be useful.

We, “Slavs and Tatars,” stand in both camps. We believe that art should play a social role, but at the same time it must also be a transformative aesthetic experience. I think textiles are one of the media that can do this, because they come from the applied arts. Seeing a textile work, I do not feel such an immediate hierarchy as, for example, when seeing a painting. Even if the textile is not made for use, the memory of its use remains – after all, we use textiles all the time. So this memory of use is very significant. Of course, it is also one of the media that resisted male dominance and patriarchal approaches to art the longest. Textile was not considered important enough, so it was left to women. And today that has turned out to be its strength. It is less compromised than sculpture, which is a very masculine traditional art form – in terms of both the scale and nature of the work.

I recently read about the connection between Slavic culture and Persians specifically through textiles, carpets. I was surprised – I had never noticed it. Persian carpets and, you know, those Russian carpets you usually see on grandmothers’ walls…

I think it is an Eastern European habit – to put carpets on the wall or behind the bed, so you can lean against them. In Iran we don’t do that, carpets are only on the floor. I remember once in Poland, in Zakopane, locals even put a carpet – a kilim! – on a beautiful wooden table as a tablecloth. It was amazing. So beautiful. With pins. And you know, a kilim… it is not thick, but it is not a tablecloth either. It doesn’t crease. I thought it was actually quite nice, because it gave a real presence to the table.

We ourselves have worked with carpets as doors: you pass through carpet doors, which can also be seen in large 13th-century mosques. In Damascus, at the Umayyad Mosque, the doors are three to four metres high, they are kept open all day, but in front, to keep the cold out, they hang a large carpet and cut a slit in the middle – right through an industrially woven carpet, not a handmade one. It is similar to velvet curtains in restaurants in winter. And there is something very strange, uncanny, in passing through a carpet.

What were the curatorial emphases of “Survival Kit”?

We wanted to explore ideas related to Simurgh: the fluidity of identity, transnationalism, and multiplicity. For us this is fundamental – both to who we are and to what we do. These ideas are increasingly under threat. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we are asked not only to take a position but also to clearly state who we are. But each of us contains multiplicities. I really like a quote from Columbia University researcher Hamid Dabashi: “Every home has its abroad.” I truly believe that the idea of cosmopolitanism, of multiplicity, is not reserved only for sophisticated people, travellers, or immigrants. Each of us contains multiplicities, we just need to find them. Pure identities do not exist – not German, not Jewish, not Iranian, not Latvian.

18.09.2025

Satori.lv

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