Alter/Native realities of modern Mongolia

Some Things in a Space

Batzorig Mart

Batzorig Mart has often resorted to the language of road signs and maps in his paintings, placing them in various thought-provoking juxtapositions. In this exhibition, he presents two assemblages of paintings that incorporate collages, objet trouvé and superimposition.

He questions the visual form of road signs as semiotics of “observations along the road” that are created and placed to regulate urban traffic, and yet obtain other meanings in his paintings. Batzorig asks: “To what extent can countryfolk moving to the cities for a new mode of life be regulated by the semiotics of the signs? Why do the Mongol urban citizens, young and old, never stop seeking ways to return to the steppe?” He is primarily concerned with the complexity of urbanisation as a process that is layered with the persistent (and thus critical) urge and desire to have horses and a ger-based life in the steppe, even for people born in cities.

Yesterday

Munguntsetseg Lkhagvasuren

Time: my feet turn cold, my palms turn warm

Munguntsetseg Lkhagvasuren

Munguntsetseg Lkhagvasuren is a performance artist whose main ideas are based around the experience and questioning of time.

“My feet turn cold, my palms turn warm” is a recurring concept in her work which suggests the natural fleeting rhythm of time, the ever-moving now and human movements, and thereby spatial experience.

Her works explore this idea through two separate but related approaches: two-dimensional work of oil on canvas and a performance along a country road.”

Blue Awakening

Enkhbold Togmidshiirev

“Enkhbold Togmidshiirev, a performance artist, takes from the traditional architecture of the ger (yurt) in order to build his own mobile homes as a tool for the exploration of some big questions.

As he explains: “Everything in the ger’s structure connects with traditional spiritual customs and carries both functional and symbolic meanings; the ger also connects us inseparably with the surrounding landscape. Besides its mobility, it causes us to consider ideas of both human communication with nature and animals as well as human connections among themselves.” Thus, the ger connects with fundamental Mongolian concepts and views of universe.

In his performance with the self-built mobile home featured in this video, Enkhbold aims to “reflect on the spaces in, outside or with the ger,” taking the centre of his ger “like an image of the world’s centre. My performance triggers a deep reflection through sounds, colors, movements and images. It is very important to me how people experience my works, even virtually, and in my performance the core idea is the exchange of energy through the experience.”

Alter/Native realities of modern Mongolia

In her study of traditional pastoral societies, such as in Mongolia, historian Li Narangoa has pointed out that such peoples have developed a “divided urbanism–pastoralism, in which both the new urban citizenry and the pastoral communities are under the complex rule of a new city-based elite, international institutions and the market.” This process of transformation—of traditions and cultural values, of modes of life and pastoral migrations—entails cultural adaptation and transformation which anthropologist Uradyn Bulag has called “alter/native modernity.” This exhibition of three Mongolian artists, accompanied by a curatorial commentary, explores such transformational changes through the lens of roads in rural and urban settings in Mongolia.

A large network of asphalt or concrete roads are built in the towns and cities, whereas rough, dirt-based roads are the usual pathways between rural locales. The three artists’ multidimensional works are visual responses and performance-based interactions with each type of road, aiming at critical thinking on alter/native practices associated with each. What is the agency of roads in urban–pastoral divide, for the communities whose lifestyles are inherently linked to nature, and for newly emerged environmental activism? These artists’ works, it is hoped, raise important questions and trigger new thoughts for each viewer.

Uranchimeg (Orna) Tsultem

1. Batzorig Mart (b. 1979), was educated in Fine Art (BFA 2001, MFA 2003) at the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture (MUAC). He taught at the School of Broadcasting and Media Arts of MUAC, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia between 2001 and 2008. He has had various solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Mongolia since 2001. His works have been shown internationally in Hong Kong, Japan, China and South Korea.

2. Enkhbold Togmidshiirev (b. 1978), was educated in Fine Art (BFA 2005) at the Institute of Fine Art in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He taught at Institute of Fine Art of MUAC from 2005 to 2010. Since 2005, he has been a member of Blue Sun Mongolian Contemporary Art Center in Ulaanbaatar.
He has had solo shows (2011, 2014, 2016) and participated in group exhibitions in Mongolia since 2006. He represented Mongolia as part of the First Mongolia Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennale in Italy in 2015. His works have been shown internationally in Hong Kong, Japan, China, Australia, South Korea, Finland, Holland and UK. He has been invited for international residences in Holland (2009), Finland (2010), Jeju island in S. Korea (2010), Manchester UK (2011) and China (2018). His work was awarded the “Best Work” category in Mongolia in 2016 and recognized by a grant in 2016 from the Art Incubator Project, USA.

3. Munguntsetseg Lkhagvasuren, was educated in Fine Art (BFA 2009) at the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture (MUAC). She has had solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in Mongolia since 2009. Her works have been shown internationally in China and South Korea, and she has held residencies in Mongolia (2017) and China (2018). Her art has received awards from Xanadu Gallery in 2010, 2011, Grand Prize at the 4th Land Art Biennale LAM 360 in 2016, and Grand Prize at the Joint exhibition of Mongolian–Korean Young Artists.

4. Uranchimeg (Orna) Tsultem, received a PhD in Art History from University of California, Berkeley in 2009, and a BA (1993) and then an MA (1995) in Art History from Mongolian University of Arts and Culture (MUAC). She taught at MUAC from 1995 to 2002, at the National University of Mongolia (2013–2014), Yonsei University in South Korea (2015), UC Berkeley (2010–2017) and National University of Iceland (2018). She has been Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair in International Studies and Assistant Professor of Asian Art at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design since 2019. Dr Uranchimeg has curated Mongolian art exhibitions internationally since 1997, including at E&J Frankel Gallery in New York City (2000), HanArt Gallery (Hong Kong, 2011), 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012), 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and Sapar Contemporary in NYC (2019). Her publications include six books in Mongolia, exhibition catalog essays for two museums in Finland (2010–2011), and for the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1999, 2012) and the Ethnography Museum in Warsaw, Poland (2011). Recent academic articles have been published in South Asian Studies (UK), Artibus Asiae (Switzerland), Third Text (UK) and Cross-Currents. Her edited volume Buddhist Art of Mongolia: Cross-Cultural Connections, Discoveries and Interpretations Special Issue. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Special Issue. (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2019). Her monograph A Monastery on the Move: Art and Politics in Later Buddhist Mongolia is published by University of Hawaii Press (2020). Her current manuscript, titled Text, Image and Imagination in Mongolian Buddhist Rituals is under peer review at Columbia University Press. Dr Uranchimeg’s work has received awards from the American Council of Learned Societies (2014–2016) and the Library of Congress (2013), among many other awards and grants. She was awarded an honorary title “Cultural Envoy of Mongolia” by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia in 2016.

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