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Artwork Description

Dark Yelbow belongs to a taxonomy of unique glass blown lamps (the Slavic etymology of melon stems from the verb дыть or ‘to blow'), each paying tribute to a particular species of a Central Asian melon. Uzbek legend has it that the melon originally grew only in the Garden of Eden. One day, the people received the melon as a divine gift from the Almighty, who had inscribed a message on it before sending it to them.The presence of tiny cracks on the ripe melon caught the attention of the locals, as they appeared to be reminiscent of Arabic script. The pattern is never repeated, so with each melon, the people were not only gifted a treat, but new knowledge. Unfortunately, the people could not decipher the melons’ message. Slavs and Tatars’ newest body of work looks to a variety of melons found in Central Asia, in particular in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, as repositories of knowledge, as vectors of writing, as well as agencies of resource extraction. Considered to be a rare delicacy, the winter melon is carefully stored in warehouses (ковунхане) to ripen late, amongst the last fruit to do so as the first frosts arrive. So it is that the melon is coveted throughout Eurasia as an exceptional, almost miraculous product of nature: a luscious, sugary yield within an otherwise increasingly barren season and landscape.