Pickle Politics
Slavs and Tatars

08.12.2023 — 17.03.2024

The exhibition introduces’ the collective’s work through their most prominent initiative, a Eurasian platform where the limits and power of the tongue are tested, as a space for discourse and affect, outside the confines of the traditional institution.

Over the past five years, the art collective Slavs and Tatars has grown its already capacious practice of exhibitions, lectures, and publications to include curatorial and mentoring programs. From a residency program for young arts professionals to Pickle Bar pop-ups around the world, the collective has sought to activate and give agency to the notions of hospitality and regionalism central to their work. Slavs and Tatars launched Pickle Bar in 2020, a few doors down from the artists’ studio in Berlin’s multicultural Moabit district. Since then, it has welcomed artists, lecturers, writers, musicians and performers who explore the limits of ideologies and the edges of belief systems within a sour, if not salty, setting.

For the first time, the exhibition at West Den Haag brings together newly commissioned artworks by Slavs and Tatars and the works of artists from Pickle Bar’s extended network. The presented works are paired with a public programme, comprising five performances by international artists, who investigate the politics, materiality, and volatility of languages, as well as the acts of ingesting and vocalizing political agendas within Slavs and Tatars’ geographic remit.