Written by: Hanoe Ko
Published in the ‘ARTASIAPACIFIC’ Magazine USSUE 82 (Mar/Apr 2013)
Posted at ‘artasiapacific.com’ (August 19, 2016)
Sitting in the director’s office at the Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery (MNMAG) is an impressive architectural maquette of a proposed new high-rise. In August of last year, the institution’s director, Chadraabal Adiyabazar, explained to ArtAsiaPacific that this model is part of a plan for a national art museum that he hopes to present to the Mongolian Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science later in the near future. The design, with its structure of red columns, is inspired by the imagery of a canvas on an easel. One half is adorned with vertical lines of traditional Mongolian calligraphy, which add a cultural touch to the “artwork on an easel” motif. Attached to the side of the structure is a geometrical annex that looks like an angular cousin of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim building in New York. “This national museum is still at the research and planning stage, so the plan may change depending on the land that we can secure,” Chadraabal said. “We are aiming for it to be the biggest fine-arts center in Mongolia, with venues for exhibiting traditional, modern and contemporary art, facilities for research and preservation and an educational program that will include conferences, symposiums and workshops.”
Until then, the MNMAG remains the sole national institution that regularly exhibits contemporary art in Mongolia. Located in Sukhbaatar Square, in the capital city Ulaanbaatar, the gallery operates out of a rented space in the Palace of Culture. The MNMaAG, originally a department of the Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum, became an independent organization in 1991 with the aim of increasing public appreciation for modern and contemporary Mongolian art. Focusing on works dating from 1921 onward, the MNMAG has since collected nearly 3,200 artworks, a small percentage of which is displayed at the gallery, alongside temporary exhibitions of contemporary art.
“We exhibit local artists, but we also work on joint projects and conduct research with international artists,” said Chadraabal, who has headed the MNMAG since 2009. Recent events include the second edition of the Land Art Biennial, with participants from North and South America, Europe and Asia focusing on how land art can approach relationships between aesthetics and politics. Back in 2011, the MNMAG reached a milestone when it organized the participation of Mongolian artists in the 26th Asian International Art Exhibition, which took place at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul. The show, which is held in a different Asian city for each edition, exhibited hundreds of local and international artworks, and held workshops with artists from 14 countries, including China, Indonesia and Japan. It was, at the time, one of the largest events in which MNMAG had been involved in its two-decade history.
Chadraabal is also an artist, and was one of the participants in the 26th Asian International Art Exhibition. A native of Tov province in central Mongolia, he studied fine arts at the Mongolian State Pedagogical University, Ulaanbaatar, graduating in 2001. Now 33 years old, Chadraabal has exhibited his paintings and sculptures both locally and internationally. He worked as an art professor at the Mongolian State University of Education and headed the Association of Young Artists in Mongolia, before taking up his current position at the MNMAG. “Even though I have my duties to the gallery, I try to spend as much time as possible focusing on my own artwork,” he said. Chadraabal held a string of solo shows in 2011, including “Bull and Horse Composition” at Berlin’s Zurag Galerie, which had been founded by Mongolian artist Otgonbayar Ershuu the previous year. The exhibition showcased a series of oil paintings depicting dynamically contorted bulls in vibrant shades of red, blue, yellow and black. Chadraabal further explored the theme, a recurring subject in his work, in his “Bulls & Bulls” exhibition at the art gallery of the Union of Mongolian Artists (UMA), Ulaanbaatar, where his paintings were exhibited alongside his bronze sculptures and ink drawings of the virile beasts.
Chadraabal, who wears many hats within the Mongolian arts community, has been a member of the UMA—a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Mongolian fine art—since 2003, and a board member since 2010. Besides its art gallery, the union operates 50 private studios for its members and holds local exhibitions and awards, as well as collaborative projects with international artists and institutions. Its 600-plus membership includes both young and established artists, whose works range from paintings and sculptures to murals and traditional crafts. In December 2012, the UMA celebrated its 70th anniversary with a large-scale group exhibit of works by 130 of its members, displaying traditional and decorative art alongside contemporary pieces.
Although active, the contemporary arts community of Mongolia is still nascent. “The art scene is growing and expanding in Mongolia,” noted Chadraabal, who has recently seen a gradual but marked shift away from traditional aesthetics. “The younger generation are mostly working in the field of installation, new media and performance art. But it is not only this younger generation but also mid-career and established artists who are working with new and foreign ideas and themes.” According to Chadraabal, the exploration of such concepts has been made possible by the proliferation of information through digital technology.
New media art was also the main focus of Tiger Translate Mongolia, a four-day art event that took place in Ulaanbaatar in August 2012. Organized by Tiger Beer, the project brought together three international artists (from the Philippines and Australia) and six emerging Mongolian artists to collaborate on paintings inspired by the city of Ulaanbaatar. In choosing the local artists, including a painter working in an impressionist style and a performance artist, Chadraabal and his fellow judges considered “the creativity of their ideas, and how these were expressed in the form of attractive, interesting works.” Indeed, the neon paintings that resulted from Tiger Translate Mongolia were a rampant burst of creativity. They incorporated photographic images, graffiti and graphic design along with neotraditional Mongolian iconography, and were presented at a live-art performance for the project’s grand finale.
Looking ahead, Chadraabal is working to initiate a major new show in Mongolia, to be organized by the MNMAG. “If it goes according to plan, the exhibition will take place in 2014,” Chadraabal said. “We will invite international artists to Mongolia and hold workshops that will involve traveling to the Gobi Desert. We are planning to invite around 200 artists from 20 different countries in Asia; it will be the biggest contemporary art exhibition in Mongolia.” The project will be partially supported by the government, but Chadraabal is also attempting to find additional funding from private (and possibly foreign) sources.
Chadraabal is hopeful about what awaits the Mongolian arts community. “I think that in the future it will grow in new and broader ways, he said. “The art is evolving. Artists need to find out, by themselves, their own ideas and identity, and only then can their artworks become more creative.”