The Contest of the Fruits

Join us for the official book launch for the Haverford College and MIT Press publication The Contest of the Fruits at Twelve Gates Arts on Friday, November 5, 2021 at 5:30pm. The book brings together artists, academics, poets, and performers to create a visually compelling volume that deploys different registers (high and low) to examine subjects often considered mutually exclusive (for example, religion and hip-hop). It offers essays by leading scholars and journalists that cover topics ranging from language politics to the prominence of Uyghur rappers in China. Shorter “pop-out” texts take a more tentacular approach to Uyghur culture, sampling poetry by diaspora Uyghur poets and discussing such subjects as calligraphy, Uyghur pop music, mäshräp, and the Sufi practice of Sama. You can order your copy here. 

The event will include an introduction by editors Slavs and Tatars and Guangtian Ha, along with readings by poets Munawwar Abudulla and Tahir Hamut Izgul with translation by Joshua L. Freeman. Please RSVP here. 

The Contest of the Fruits takes a nineteenth-century Uyghur allegorical poem as the point of departure for investigations into language, politics, religion, humor, resilience, and resistance in a pluralistic world. It includes a virtual series, publication, new animation work, and exhibition at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery by renowned artist collective Slavs and Tatars in partnership with Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, Twelve Gates Arts, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Philadelphia). 

The Contest of the Fruits exhibit runs from September 10–December 12, 2021. All exhibits and events are free and open to the public. For full schedule details and locations, visit our website.

The Contest of the Fruits is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Visitors to The Contest of the Fruits exhibition and related in-person programming are required to wear masks at all times while indoors. Visitors should practice social distancing when interacting with anyone outside their family. If you or anyone in your group feels unwell, thinks they may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, or are waiting for COVID-19 test results, please refrain from visiting and reschedule your visit for another time.