Slavs and Tatars. LONG LVIVE LVIV. СЛАВА ЗА БРЕСЛАВA
Duration: 16.10.2021–31.01.2022
Opening: 15.10.2021, 18:30
Join Facebook event: LINK
Beyond doubt, the history of Lviv and Wrocław is intertwined, not only because of the difficult episode of displacements, but also due to the fact that for many people, the two cities have become home, lost and rediscovered. The past, which is actually continued in the present through the current migration movements, is a central point of the concept behind the exhibition LONG LVIVE LVIV / СЛАВА ЗА БРЕСЛАВА. However, it would be an oversimplification to conclude that past repatriation is the only key to understanding the intentions of the artists – equally or more importantly, the presentation concerns the rich academic heritage of the pre-war Lviv School, including in particular the Department of Oriental Studies, a unique and leading institution of this type in Eastern Europe at that time.
With the advent of the new, post-war reality, within the equally new borders of the Polish state, the laborious and uncertain process of building a life according to as yet unrecognised principles began. Most of the academics from the John II Casimir University of Lviv (today the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv) ended up at universities in Poland, including in Wrocław and other cities in the formerly German western territories. Despite the fact that some of the most outstanding representatives of the Lviv intelligentsia found home here, the Department of Oriental Studies was never re-established, so its memory and legacy were in some sense lost forever. Today, thanks to the exhibition of the Slavs and Tatars collective, the Department is symbolically resurrected – on the one hand, it is to become an obvious starting point for reflection on the exhibition concept, and on the other, a symbolic figure leading to very important and topical issues, such as tolerance, respect and understanding of ethnic and cultural differences.
The background to the narrative told by Slavs and Tatars is provided by an original selection of oriental carpets from the unique collection of the Kulczycki family. Thanks to the courtesy of the Tytus Chałubiński Tatra Museum in Zakopane, a fragment of the collection will be presented at OP ENHEIM – for the first time in a context other than a museum, in the form of a contemporary art exhibition. The collection was assembled in Lviv by Włodzimierz and Jerzy Kulczycki and contains valuable examples of rare oriental rugs, carpets and tapestries from the Caucasus, Western Asia or countries like Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. By juxtaposing their works with the collection, Slavs and Tatars invite us to reconsider the question of how interstate borders, territories, ambitions and self-perception can influence categories such as science, knowledge and power. The historic carpets fulfil yet another function here – they provide an illustration or a visual link to theoretical sciences studied by researchers at the Lviv Department of Oriental Studies at the beginning of the 20th century and in the interwar period. In order to revive this academic legacy, the OP ENHEIM team in collaboration with Slavs and Tatars have prepared a public programme that comprise masterclasses, workshops and language courses, including Arabic and Persian. They are conducted by scientists from the University of Lviv and Polish specialists in the field. Moreover, to mark the exhibition itself as well as this hybrid and speculative cooperation between the universities in Wrocław and Lviv, the Slavs and Tatars collective has prepared a merchandising offer that will be available to the public throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Being one of the few buildings in central Wrocław that survived the war, the Oppenheims’ tenement house is a silent witness to history in a sense, or as Lisa Höhenleitner put it, it tells the history of the city through its own past. We hope that in a venue where the past meets the present, this exhibition will resonate fully and with due understanding.
