Bacteria-Inspired Art Infects a Chelsea Gallery

Bacteria are more than just the building blocks of microorganisms in art collective Slavs and Tatars' latest exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Titled Afteur Pasteur, an homage to the microbiologist who discovered microbial fermentation and pasteurization, the exhibition uses references to bacteria and microbes as unlikely lenses to examine larger cultural and historical ideas.

A series of army cots, political posters, and varied sculptures are scattered throughout the exhibition’s rooms. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Slavs and Tatars exhibition without intelligent and playful humor; an army cot displays the cunning phrase “Give Peace a Chance, Bomb Ayran (a savory Turkish yogurt drink).” A hung poster of Asia reads “Hagamos Mongolia Grande de Nuevo” (or, "Make Mongolia Great Again") while white lines in the shape of bacteria sprawl out across the map. A large mirror depicting the outline of a clenched fist with its thumb replaced by a pickle is a representation of the Egyptian proverb, “Life is like a cucumber, one day in your hand and one day in your ass,” according to the press release.

The exhibition’s amalgamated mix of references to microorganisms and Eurasian culture are a result of Slavs and Tatars general methodology and approach when creating projects: “Much of our work revolves around the idea that we must approach, embrace, and disrupt knowledge through more than simply the analytical or cerebral faculty,” the art collective tells The Creators Project. “The new cycle of research into pickle politics look at bacteria for equally polemic as well as anodyne reasons. Regarding the latter, humans are increasingly seen as a composite of non-human components.”

After referencing writings by professors Ana Louise Keating and Kimberly C. Merenda that explain how our bodies contain over 100 trillion assorted bacteria, the collective adds a final note detailing their goals for Afteur Pasteur: “If we can revise our traditionally antagonistic relationship with microcosms, perhaps this will serve as a template to extend to our fellow species.”

Interactive art, another trademark technique employed by the collective makes several appearances throughout the exhibition. A fully functional ‘bacteria bar’ serves the yogurt drink ayran (sorry, there’s no kombucha here) allowing visitors to ingest a constituent life form while perusing the remaining works. Suspended from the ceiling of another room is PraySway (blue), a steel sculpture of enlarged rosary beads upon which viewers are allowed (and highly encouraged) to swing on.

Regarding their predilection towards interactivity, Slavs and Tatars look to break away from the same overabundant modes of art production that are repeated ad nauseam today: “We are living in a period where art happens to occupy the zeitgeist. Among many other things, it means there is a glut of it. So it becomes all the more urgent for us to somehow create work that continues to have a disruptive function, but without being immediately identifiable as such,” explains Slavs and Tatars.

“When one work can be touched or ridden upon and others can’t, it creates an indeterminacy that we try to cultivate throughout: it’s not immediately clear whether the works are historically accurate or elaborate fictions, sacred or profane, to be touched or only viewed, and so on. The same goes for political critique: it is relatively easy (if often ineffective) to do so frontally or in confrontation. What’s difficult is to deliver critique with commemoration, in essence building something up while stabbing it in the back.”

Explore the bacteria bar, prayer bead swing, and the rest of Afteur Pasteur at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery until October 22nd. More artwork by Slavs and Tatars can be found here.

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