From the Heart of Mongolia by brad gordon

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VOLUME 19 NUMBER 3 MAY/JUNE 2009

Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav Raqib Shaw * r e a * New Chinese Landscape And The Avant-Garde * Neil Folberg * Art Dubai * Al Bastakiya Art Fair * Sharjah Biennial 2009 * Jitish Kallat * Jendela Art Group * Reviews * Auction

From The Heart Of Mongolia At the beginning of the 1990s, when Mongolia became an independent and democratic nation free of Russian control, its artists, both young and established, set about making innovative art to address their newfound artistic and personal freedoms. In doing so they had to adopt fresh ways of looking at the world. Their artistic identities now reach far beyond that which Soviet propaganda art promoted for over seven decades. Among the most visionary of these artists is the painter Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav. Her dynamic art speaks directly from the heart while blending tradition and modernity into a unique artistic voice.

By Ian Findlay

Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Hair Performance: I am Protected, 2009, oil on canvas, 160 x 150 cm. All images: Courtesy of the Artist and Teo & Namfah Gallery. 72 ASIAN ART NEWS

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hen the communist party gained control of Mongolia in 1921, under the direction of the Soviet Union, the eradication of Mongolian traditions and cultural life was swift, brutal, and all consuming. The great purges of the 1930s saw the destruction of hundreds of monasteries, during which tens of thousands of monks were killed along with innumerable intellectuals and ordinary people. The cost of “progress” under oppressive collectivization and class struggle in reshaping the country into a 20th-century “model” communist state was almost complete isolation from the rest of the world. And throughout all the changes (social, cultural, political, and educational) the loss of identity was keenly felt among Mongolians.1 For artists the thirst for new artistic identities has been keenly felt since the advent of democracy, in the early 1990s. This has informed the best art made by many of Mongolia’s finest modern artists, many of whom were educated either at art schools in the Soviet Union or in former Eastern Bloc countries such as Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia (the Czech Republic since 1993.) At these art schools, as well as Mongolia’s pre-1990s art institutions, socialist realism dominated the students’

curriculum. Changing course has not been easy, especially for older artists. Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, who is 42, is not one of these. But for her, studying under the socialist system at Ulaanbaatar's Art Institute, from 1983 to 1987, and at the Academy of Fine Art and Theater, Minsk, from 1989 to 1993, was so frustrating that she left before graduating. This act underscores her resolute nature. “During the communist time in Mongolia and Russia, I only studied good technique and color,” she says. “But there was not any heart in the teaching.”2 Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav was born in 1967 in Ulaanbaatar where her early painting studies were dominated by a Soviet art curriculum, which she says was “little more than propaganda.” What she wanted was an education in which the richness and vitality of Mongolian cultural traditions and a modern visual sensibility could be combined to represent both her own psychology and her observations on a rapidly changing society. At the same time, she wanted to make art that possessed “a physical presence, colors that are typically Mongolian, and with a geometry to the features that comes from traditional culture. I also wanted a stillness in my art that reflects something of the stoicism of nomadic Mongolian culture.”

This became possible for her after her return from Russia, when she began to see how the realities of democracy and freedom of expression were not only altering Mongolian society as a whole but also changing people’s individual expectations. New times required fresh art and subject matter that spoke directly both to her artistic expectations and to Mongolian emotions after decades of oppression. Today, she notes, there is a contemporary art that represents true Mongolian aspirations and self-expression and that is not propaganda. The change, as many artists say, is that since the early 1990s art and social thinking have moved away from the collective to the personal. Munkhtsetseg found her subject in women—steely, bare-breasted women— who represent a rejection of totalitarianism’s puritanical propaganda in which women, even though at the forefront of society, never appear to be equal to men. These women, carefully constructed in the artist’s mind, are then deconstructed on canvas to represent their spiritual freedom and relationship to the world around them in all its complexity. Women in Mongolia, Munkhtsetseg notes, have always been equal and this is why she doesn’t “try to take a feminist point of view. I just express

what I think and feel. It is up to the viewer to interpret what they see. Mongolians have always respected women as equals. Women have the right to rule the household and the state. When men, in the past, went to war, women controlled everything. In traditional life men had to listen to women. So all my paintings represent the power of women.”

Above left: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Pulse, 2008, oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm. Above right: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Endless Desire, 2008, oil on canvas, 250 x 150 cm.

oman as her central subject has given Munkhtsetseg the opportunity to create a profoundly personal narrative through which to explore questions of spirituality, birth and death, female sexuality, personal disappointment, and motherhood. At the same time, she could utilize the symbols of Mongolia’s rich cultural heritage to reinforce her penetrating narrative. Birds, clothing, hairstyles, the place of children, traditional Mongolian medicine, legends and myths about the origins of the world, and humankind’s relationship to nature and animals all inform her figurative art and recent abstract and representational collages and drawings. The power flowing from Munkhtsetseg’s bold figures is in stark contrast to her slight physical presence that hides a steely determination. She observes and listens intently. Her slim hands exude an appealing combination of fragility and strength. She wields a brush thick with paint and tears paper for her collages with equal passion. When the results are not to her liking, she simply begins again, working until she is satisfied. When she is happy with the results, she is never boastful. Indeed, Munkhtsetseg (“Mugi” to her friends) has a sense of humility about her that is memorable. For all her accomplishments, since the mid-1980s, she says simply, “It is only during the past five years that I have considered myself an artist. Before, I only saw myself as an artist in training.” Munkhtsetseg’s portraits of women are not gentle or refined or timid. They are tough, highly textured, boldly colored studies of characters that exude

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powerful emotions. While she speaks clearly to her own culture, she is also addressing womankind far beyond it. Her protagonists, raw and uncompromising, are by turns also absolutely still and animated by tension in their fluid geometry, which is accentuated by such strong blues, reds, browns, and greens. This is especially true of her works in which infants and giving birth sit at very heart of her narrative. One sees this in Endless Desire (2008), the reality of multiple generations, and the work on Sa paper entitled Nexus Series No.1 (2009). Spirit of Survival (2009), made bolder by the artist’s use of a rich green, not only emphasizes the importance of children as a physical reality but also, as they sit on leaves that are affi xed to the woman’s hair, as dream. These works confirm some of the major strengths of her art, such as her “love for textures and colors.” Taken together these works form a collective memMunkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Spirit of Survival, 2009, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm. ory of not only the place of children and their life-affirming innocence in the life of a woman and society in general, but also the power and spirituality of womanhood. The artist’s collective memory is also deeply informed both by traditional and modern culture and the profound personal experience of the loss of a child. “Children symbolize the nexus of life. They represent personal love. I have a son and I have experienced the loss of a child at birth,” she says. “After my son, I had a miscarriage and could not have another child, which has affected me deeply. This is why my works are deeply personal and why my works have helped to heal my spirit.” While Munkhtsetseg cites such artists as Kiki Smith, Hans Arp, Louise Bourgeois, and Yayoi Kusama, as well as the Mongolian sculptor Zanabazar (1635– 1723) as inspirations, she says that none are influences. The artist says that when she sees the work of other artists, “It makes me reflect on myself because it is very difficult to be oneself.” Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Nexus, 2009, ink and color on Sa paper, 80 x 60 cm. Beyond traditional MonASIAN ART NEWS 75

golian culture and symbolism she notes that theater design, mural art, and Russian ikons have also played a part in changing her art over the past 22 years. And while her oeuvre is dominated by both figurative and abstract work, she sees herself merely as an artist, “neither an abstract artist nor a realist.” If Munkhtsetseg’s art is neither abstract nor realistic, there is certainly a case for seeing much of it as tending toward the surreal. Her symbolism and how she employs it within her paintings and collage reinforces this idea. Munkhtsetseg has carefully constructed her women over the past two decades, beginning with a concentration on hair, then the eyes, the ears, the legs, the hands, and then the breasts; while they are full, they are rarely erotic elements in her pictures. Such careful development was also a revelation for the artist. “When I had learned to paint all the physical elements of the body, it felt like my painting had gained a soul,” she says. “It felt like a living being was being born through the painting and it became more spiritual as my work moved from the merely physical representation.” In Sacred Offering (2009) [see cover] and Pulse (2008), for example, the birds—including magpies and skylarks— which in traditional Mongolian medicine are symbols of one’s heartbeat, are central to the surreal drama that is taking place. In Sacred Offering Munkhtsetseg’s birds

rest in the luxuriant hair of the alien bluefaced woman, a timeless face, one that reminds the viewer of religious figures in ikon painting and ancient mural art. This blue—an important color for Munkhtsetseg—is also found in the moving work entitled Gazing (2009). In Pulse the birds are linked to the woman’s veins and are either drawing blood from her or taking her pulse. Other symbols at the bottom of the painting—to the left and the right—add to the surreal image. “In nomadic culture Mongolians believe that birds are symbols of good and bad news and they can also be used in fortune telling,” she says. “Birds have been used in Mongolian and Tibetan traditional anatomy for centuries. I am inspired by this as birds in my art represent healing, transfiguration, becoming pregnant, and the pulse of life.”

hat Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav’s art is about the power of women— physically, emotionally, and spiritually—is clear. With each new series she builds upon earlier work to make these points more fully as she matures as an artist. Her use of hair, for example, speaks not only to female beauty and the power of women, but also to the spiritual. “In traditional Mongolian culture, she says, “the hair holds the woman’s spirit and soul. I believe in this. But hair also represents the abstract cosmic world.”

How she addresses this in her painting and drawing is through a combination of power and the lyricism inherent in her line. In Hair Performance: I am Protected (2009) the hair flows from the head of nude woman on her back at the top of the picture as if it is seeking the earth. In the delicate line drawing entitled Hair Performance: Hair Ceremony (2009) the nude figure is sitting, legs open, at the top of the painting while her hair flows gently to the ground around her. Here Munkhtsetseg is speaking not about sexuality—though it is certainly an element in her work—but about how people are rooted to the earth, especially women whose grasp on matters of life and death are often more grounded than men’s. “Women give birth to men,” she says. “And the traditional concept of hair is that it holds the spirit and soul. So in these works the women are seeking their connection to nature as the hair seeks to be rooted in the ground. When the hair is being cut, as in my Liberation Series No.3 (2008), it can be compared to meditation so as to release the mind and soul of pain.” Further enhancing the surreal in Munkhtsetseg’s paintings and collages is how she uses aspects of traditional Mongolian medicine, its spells and the rituals to look beyond the surface of the body. That birds and animals feature so prominently in her art is not mere affectation. It

Above left: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Silence Series No.3, 2009, Sa paper, 80 x 60 cm. Above right: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Hair Performance - Hair Ceremony, 2009, Sa paper, 80 x 60 cm.

is something that is thoroughly of Mongolian traditional culture and beliefs in that animals can heal humans, both physically and mentally. For Munkhtsetseg the body is a whole cosmic unit, not merely external and internal worlds to be treated separately: They speak as one in the natural order of life. “I used to draw organs individually, but now, when I draw them, it is as a whole, as an integral part of the whole body,” she says, “Now, in my art the body has a spirit or a soul, before it was bits and pieces.”

Above left: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Spectacular Body, 2008, oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm. Above right: Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, Pattern of Nature, 2009, oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm.

hile her use of traditional Mongolian medicine symbolism, with its origins in shamanism, is strong, she feels that in her collages, “I can express the ideas of traditional Mongolian medicine much stronger because I can use ready-made materials like book pages. “For me, one thing that is important is that I make many abstract sketched in advance. I started to use paper for collage so that the paper and sketches lead to the final creation where I want to show that spells and treatments can be used to change the gender of a child in the womb, using sheep wool and goat wool, making a thread of it, and tying it around the body as the person is reading a mantra.”

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Munkhtsetseg’s collage technique is very different from that used in her paintings. In these the figures' spirit emerges from beneath the brush, while in collage, she says, “When I create a figure I do it by tearing the paper. I use my hands and it feels like the paper itself creates the figure.” The works in which she utilizes handmade paper, cloth, pencil, ink, oil, pages from anatomy books, and recently, photographs, have added immeasurably to Munkhtsetseg’s artistic vision. Using collage allows her to show other aspects of her thoughts and beliefs in different ways, from examining shamanistic beliefs to articulating the simplest gesture of a child. The precision of painting gives way in her collages to a rougher texture and occasionally a sense of spontaneity that makes for a different narrative tone and perception. It is as if she is peeling back the skin of her emotions to let the viewer inside her very thoughts on life, birth, death, and personal loss. Although her collages are highly controlled creations and emotionally and intellectually on a different artistic plane than her paintings, this does not mean to say that they are always austere. Far from it, for she injects moments of wry humor, too, at her own expense. And she makes us realize that her art is far greater

than the sum of its parts, and that life is greater than simply breathing, loving, and constant struggle. Her wonderful collage series entitled Tearing Language (2009) is her gateway to the soul. Looking at a broad range of Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav’s art made since the late 1990s, one realizes that for her making art is as much about healing as it is about art itself. The early pain is slowly being assuaged through her art, the vision is becoming stronger, and the voice more confident. Despite this the artist sometimes feels momentarily doubtful. “Each year,” she says, “I feel I become more of a complete artist. But even so I always find myself feeling that there is something missing.” Δ Notes: 1. Baabar (Bat-Erdene Batbayar), History of Mongolia, Cambridge, England, The White Horse Press, 1999. The editor, Christopher Kaplonski, notes in his Editor’s Preface, “One of his [Baabar’s] most famous writings, Buu mart! (Don’t Forget!), written in Moscow in 1988, but not published in Mongolia until 1990, was a call to remember Mongolian traditions and identity in the face of socialism.” 2. Unless otherwise stated quotations from the artist are drawn from interviews conducted by the author in Ulaanbaatar between April 14 and April 17, 2009. ASIAN ART NEWS 77