FROM 19 NOV '26 UNTIL 9 MAY '27 | ROTTERDAM, 1 September 2026 – Fenix will open a new 650-square-metre temporary exhibition space on 19 November with Slavs and Tatars: Mouthfool, the collective’s first major solo presentation in the Netherlands. Running until 9 May 2027, the Rotterdam exhibition explores how language travels across borders, generations and cultures.
Image: Tongue Twist Her, Slavs and Tatars, 2013. Palazzo Capris, Turin, 2016.
Slavs and Tatars turns to language
Berlin-based art collective Slavs and Tatars is celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2026. Its work focuses on the vast area between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China, including Eastern Europe, Anatolia and Central Asia.
Rather than approaching this region primarily through wars, conflicts and national borders, the collective looks at language and the encounters between Slavic and Turkic linguistic and cultural traditions. Its name reflects centuries of exchange involving languages, ideas and customs across the region.
Slavs and Tatars has previously presented work at institutions including MoMA in New York and Tate Modern in London. Mouthfool now brings its work to Rotterdam in what will be the collective’s first major solo exhibition in the Netherlands.
“It is wonderful to open the new exhibition space at Fenix with the work of Slavs and Tatars. Their art is playful, often surprisingly humorous and at the same time makes you think. That suits Fenix. It lets you look at migration and the world around us in a new way,” said Fenix director Anne Kremers.
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Language becomes physical in Mouthfool
Mouthfool examines the ways language migrates from mouth to mouth and from one generation to the next. Sculptures, tapestries and installations turn alphabets, speech and the physical act of making sounds into tangible subjects.
In Mother Tongues and Father Throats (2012), an open mouth becomes a landscape of language. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Cyrillic characters appear at the points in the mouth and throat where their corresponding sounds are produced.
The three-metre-high tongue in Tongue Twist Her (2013) coils around a dance pole. The work refers to the ways languages and alphabets change as political power shifts.
Alphabet Abdal (2015) gives Arabic letters arms and legs, turning written characters into moving figures. The work reflects the way languages and writing systems travel with people and acquire new meanings along the way.
Mother Tongues and Father Throats, Slavs and Tatars, 2012. Raster Gallery, Warsaw.
Molla takes over Fenix Plein
One of the new works has been created specifically for Plein, Fenix’s freely accessible indoor city square. Molla’s Reverse Ride (2026) takes inspiration from Molla, a legendary trickster and folk philosopher who is also known in different cultures as Hodja or Nasreddin.
Stories about the character have circulated for more than 700 years. In Rotterdam, visitors will be invited to sit backwards in bright red racing cars and travel around a course, referring directly to depictions of Molla riding backwards on his donkey.
“We are delighted to celebrate our twentieth anniversary at Fenix and look forward to introducing the public to Molla/Nasreddin, our mascot and the star of a large-scale new work. Like him, we move forwards while looking back: our art always starts by digging up stories, languages and traditions from the past and shows how relevant and meaningful they still are today. As Faulkner said: the past is never dead. It is not even past,” said Slavs and Tatars.
The installation also connects closely with Fenix’s wider focus on migration. Throughout Mouthfool, language appears as something people carry with them through stories, rituals, recipes, myths and everyday speech.
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Workshops, food and multilingual tours
Fenix will accompany the exhibition with a public programme involving food, workshops and guided tours in several languages. The programme continues the exhibition’s focus on how language shapes identity and the way people understand their surroundings.
You will also be able to continue exploring the subject in Fenix’s permanent presentation All Directions (Alle Richtingen). A special route will connect works from the museum collection that examine the relationship between migration and language.
The route considers why particular words are chosen, how language contributes to identity and how it influences the way people interpret the world around them.
Together with Mouthfool, it places language within the broader migration stories that form the core of the museum’s programme in Rotterdam.
Fenix opens new exhibition space
Mouthfool will be the first exhibition presented in Fenix’s new 650-square-metre gallery on the ground floor. The space will host changing exhibitions offering contemporary artistic perspectives on migration.
It adds another layer to Fenix’s existing presentations, including All Directions (Alle Richtingen), The Family of Migrants and The Suitcase Maze (Het Kofferdoolhof). An exhibition by visual artist Shilpa Gupta is scheduled to follow in 2027.
Fenix is housed in a historic harbour warehouse on Rotterdam’s former quays of departure and arrival. The museum presents migration stories from across the world through work by more than a hundred artists.
Slavs and Tatars: Mouthfool runs at Fenix from 19 November 2026 until 9 May 2027.
