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MARIA-KATHARINA LANG — TSETSENTSOLMON BAATARNARAN
In her work, B. Nomin also uses pages of Buddhist sütras as symbols of the past
in connection with the present. (Fig. 3.) In September 2019, Boldiin Nomin and
her husband Batjargaliin Baatardsorig opened a joint exhibition entitled Tamlaga
(Invocations) in the Fine Arts Dsanabadsar Museum in Ulaanbaatar. In this exhibi¬
tion they dealt with questions of body and soul, spirits and consciousness. Both
B. Nomin and B. Baatardsorig are graduates of Mongol Dsurag under the teacher
Tstiltemin Narmandakh who was trained in Germany. The teacher was in line with
the “national cultural revival” after the collapse of the socialist system. Uranchimeg
notes that Ts. Narmandakh’s aim in training was “to implicitly urge to creatively re¬
think the well-informed of ‘Mongolness’, of what it really means to be a Mongol in
the contemporary area.” B. Baatardsorig points at the interesting combination of
techniques in Mongol Dsurag:
“The class of Mongol Dsurag is very interesting. In the socialist time, this style
represented socialist construction. Our teacher taught us a style that was based on
thangka painting but also was in intersections of different cultures such as Xiong¬
nu, Tang, Mongol Empire and more. One could identify it as a new way within
the Mongol Dsurag style. Her students became artists who could practice both
contemporary and traditional styles.” (B. Baatardsorig, Interview, Ulaanbaatar, 19
September, 2019)
With his technique based on Mongol Dsurag, B. Baatardsorig reaches out on political,
economic, environmental and social issues that Mongolia faces today. B. Baatard¬
sorig critically challenges the changes occurring during the transformation period,
and ironically examines tensions between traditional culture and global consumer¬
ism juxtaposing contemporary icons with fragments of Mongolian history. ?! In his
artworks, B. Baatardsorig reacts on the “alarming the situation of neoliberalism,
a state of being that has brought our Earth and nature into direct confrontation with
environmental apocalypse.”” He also has a critical view towards the loss of the
tradition and cultural identity in the era of globalisation. (Fig. 4-5.)
Conclusion
Mongolian art has always been characterised by its permeability for multiple ele¬
ments, various flows from different regions, and the freedom to choose which
elements to incorporate. Art in Mongolia took its course of being diffused and flour¬
ished in different ways under various historical conditions. The Buddhist art tradition
and techniques, which had been practiced since Dsanabadsar’s time and earlier, were
0 Uranchimeg, Tsiiltemin: Political Ecology in Baatarzorig’s art: Mongolia Js in Business. In: Five Heads
(Tavan Tolgoi) Art, Anthropology and Mongol Futurism. Eds. Empson, Rebecca — Spriggs, Hermione.
Sternberg Press, Berlin 2018, 13.
2! https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/apt8/artists/baatarzorig-batjargal.
2 Uranchimeg, Tsiiltemin: Political Ecology ..., 18.
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