The Silence of Healing

at the Edge of the World

by Jalkhaajav Munkhtsetseg

The Silence of Healing

at the Edge of the World
by Jalkhaajav Munkhtsetseg

From The Heart Of Mongolia

By Ian Findlay-Brown

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 an
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 intensely felt
among Mongolians. (1)
The great losses for Mongolians are the great painting
traditions of the 17th century and their philosophy of
life, says Tsendsuren Narangerel, painter and dean of
the decorative art department of the Fine Art Institute
of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar. The philosophy of the
Mongolian is their nomadic way of life and respect for
nature and the earth. The worst is that Mongolians not
only lost their national art but also the pride of their
culture during the Soviet period. (2)
For artists the thirst for new identities has been
profound since the advent of democracy, in the early 1990s.
This has informed the best art made by many of Mongolias
nest 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 Mongolias pre-1990s art institutions, socialist realism
dominated the students curriculum. (3)
Changing course has not been easy, especially for older
artists. Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, who is 42, is not one of
these. For her, studying art under the socialist system at
the Art Institute in Ulaanbaatar, 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. (4)
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 a geometry to the features that comes from traditional
culture. I also wanted a stillness in my art that reects
something of the stoicism of nomadic Mongolian culture.
Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav, as a painter and a woman,
believes that Mongolias new artistic vision should
also heal emotionally and spiritually. This has always
been important to her, but not always easy. Some of the
challenges she has faced in her healing process are clear
in the paintings, works on paper, and soft sculptures that
make up the exhibition The Silence of Healing at the Edge
of the World. The pain of an emerging democracy and the
dislocation of cultural traditions are deeply felt. To address
this artists need to make new art to reect this altered
society. Munkhtsetsegs art does this exceptionally well.
The process of healing only became possible for
Munkhtsetseg after her return from Russia, when she
witnessed how democracy and freedom of expression
were not only altering Mongolian society but also
changing individuals hopes. Today, she notes, there
is refreshing contemporary art that represents true
Mongolian aspirations and self-expression and that it is

not propaganda. Now that there is freedom to make art in

whatever way one desires, social thinking has moved from
the collective to the personal.
Munkhtsetseg found her subject in women steely,
bare-breasted women who represent a rejection of
totalitarianisms 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 artists mind, are then deconstructed on canvas to
represent womens spiritual freedom and their relationship
to the world around them in all its complexity. Women in
Mongolia, Munkhtsetseg notes, have always been equal
and this is why she doesnt 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, she says. 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.
Woman as her central subject has given Munkhtsetseg
the opportunity to create an uncompromising narrative
through which to explore questions of spirituality, birth
and death, female sexuality, personal disappointment, and
motherhood. To examine these she uses numerous symbols
from Mongolias rich cultural heritage. The birds, clothing,
children, traditional Mongolian medicine, legends and
myths on the origins of the world, humankinds relationship
to nature and animals, and the striking traditional hairstyle
known as ehkner us, which means married womans
hairstyle, all inform her gurative art, recent abstractions,
and representational collages and drawings.
The power owing from Munkhtsetsegs bold gures 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 satised. 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 ve
years that I have considered myself an artist. Before, I only
saw myself as an artist in training.

Munkhtsetsegs portraits of women are not gentle

or rened or timid. They are tough, highly textured,
boldly colored studies of characters that exude powerful
emotions. While she speaks clearly to her own culture,
she is also addressing womankind far beyond it. Her
commanding protagonists are by turns also absolutely
still and animated by tension in their uid geometry. This
is accentuated by her use of strong blues, reds, browns,
and greens. This is especially true of her works in which
children and giving birth sit at very heart of her narrative.
One sees this in such works as Endless Desire (2008),
representing the reality of multiple generations. Reborn (2008),
Birth Myth, and Nexus (both 2009) project the innocence of the
mother/child relationship. The dramatic Spirit of Survival), in
which the artist uses a rich green, not only to emphasize the
importance of children as a physical reality but also, as they
sit on leaves that are afxed to the womans hair, as dream.
These works conrm some of the major strengths of her art
such as her love for textures and colors.
While these works form a collective memory of both
the place of children and their life-afrming innocence
in the life of a woman and society, they also show the
power and spirituality of womanhood. This memory is
strengthened by traditional and modern imagery and
Munkhtsetsegs own personal experience of the loss of a
child. The relationship between tradition and modernity
is strongly expressed in her work. One can feel her soul
and energy and power, Tsendsuren Narangerel,
Children symbolize the nexus of life. They represent
personal love. I have a son. But I have experienced the loss
of a child at birth, Munkhtsetseg 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 (16351723) as
inspirations (5), she says that none are inuences. The artist
says that when sees the work of other artists, It makes me
reect on myself because it is very difcult to be oneself.
Beyond traditional Mongolian culture and symbolism
she notes that theater design, mural art, and Russian icons
have also played a part in changing her art over the past
two decades. And while her oeuvre is dominated by both
gurative and abstract work, she sees herself merely as an
artist, neither an abstract artist nor a realist.

If Munkhtsetsegs 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 uses
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 the women are often semi-naked, there
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 mere physical representation.
Birds - including magpies and skylarks - in traditional
Mongolian medicine are symbols of ones heartbeat, and
are central to the surreal drama that is taking place in such
works as Pulse (2008), Sacred Offering (2009), The Gift (2009),
and Lung, (2008). In Sacred Offering Munkhtsetsegs birds
rest in the luxuriant hair of the alien blue-faced woman,
a timeless face, one that reminds the viewer of religious
gures in ikon painting and ancient mural art. This blue
an important color for Munkhtsetseg, which come from the
inuence of Zanabazar is also found in her moving work
entitled Gazing (2009). In Pulse the birds are linked to the
womans veins and are either drawing blood from her or
taking her pulse. In Tangling Hair (2009) the birds appear to
nest in an ornate hairstyle suggestive of tangled branches.
Other symbols of heart and bird 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,
transguration, becoming pregnant, and the pulse of life.
That Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajavs 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 and humanitys
connection with animals. In traditional Mongolian culture,
she says, the hair holds the womans spirit and soul. I believe
in this. But hair also represents the abstract cosmic world.

She addresses this in her paintings, collages, and

drawing through a drama of color and lyrical line. In
Hair Performance: I am Protected (2009) the hair ows 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 Hair Performance: Hair Ceremony (2009) and the
oil Hair Performance Roots (2009) the nude gures sit, legs
open, at the top of the painting, their hair owing gently
to the ground seeking to root itself in the earth. In the oil
Nowever (2002), the hair of three women streams across the
picture place taking on the rhythm of a landscape.
In the early works On The Mountain (2000) and
Messenger (2002) hair is clearly shown as a metaphor for
physical power. The ehkner us hairstyle of the women
is made in the image of powerful goat horns. But here
Munkhtsetseg is not only showing power, but also
connecting humankind with the animal world and
showing just how central this is to all life.
Munkhtsetseg is speaking not about sexuality though
it is certainly an element in her work but about how
people are rooted to the earth and connected to all natural
and cosmic power. She says that this is especially true
about women whose grasp on matters of life and death,
nature and natural relationships are often more grounded
than mens.
Women give birth to men, she says. 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 her work is how she
uses aspects of traditional Mongolian medicine, its spells
and rituals to look beyond the surface of the body. That
birds and animals feature so prominently in her art is
not mere affectation. It is something that is thoroughly of
Mongolian as it the belief that animals can heal humans
both physically and mentally.
For Munkhtsetseg the body is a whole cosmic unit, not
merely separate 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.

Munkhtsetsegs collage technique is very different from

that used in her paintings. In her paintings the spirit of her
gures emerges from beneath the brush, but in collage she
says, When I create a gure I do it by tearing the paper I use
my hands and it feels like the paper itself creates the gure.
She feels that in her collages she can express the ideas
of traditional Mongolian medicine more strongly as she can
use ready-made materials like book pages from medical
texts. For me, it is important that I make many abstract
sketches in advance so that the sketches lead to the nal
creation. I can then show how spells and treatments can be
used to change the gender of a child in the womb, using
sheeps wool and goats wool, making a thread of it, and
tying it around the body as the person is reading a mantra.
The collages, in which she utilizes handmade paper,
cloth, pencil, ink, oil, pages from anatomy books, and
recently, photographs, have added immeasurably to
Munkhtsetsegs artistic vision. There is a unique and
disturbing strength to these works. She has chosen not
to look at the external beauty of the female body, but to
highlight the internal. It is inside the body that the struggle
for life takes place, within the pulsing of organs and
breathing skin, from the constant beating of the fragile
heart to the life-giving blood that hurtles through the
veins. It is here that Munkhtsetsegs cosmic reality takes
full ight. Her ne collage series Tearing Language (2009)
not only highlights the cosmic, but also speak to us as her
gateway to the soul.
Works such as Tearing Language No 2, No 9, and
No 13 exemplify just how well Munkhtsetseg constructs
the clich of the sensual naked woman shown from behind
and then how well she deconstructs it. Her images are
from the seductive poses made by commercial artists
who cater to a market that demands illusion, not truth.
Munkhtsetseg understands very well, as her dramatic
paintings show, just how often truth and illusion collide
and become tortured visions.
Tearing Language No 9 is a singularly powerful example
of her collage art. Here we are aware of the muscle, sinew,
and organs and we sense how they work together. What
the artist is clearly saying to the viewer is that beyond the
bodys soft skin lies a confusion of life-giving organs that
are not so pretty to look at. While she often reveals the
structure of bones and joints, here she uses the long plait
to become the spine: This is her only gesture to female
beauty. At the same time, she shows us that the organs of

our system have to be healed before we can become whole

again. Munkhtsetsegs collages reinforce the reality that
healing begins for us on the inside.
Using collage also allows her to show other aspects
of her thoughts and beliefs, from examining shamanistic
beliefs to articulating the simplest gesture of a child. The
heavy impasto of her paintings gives way in the collages to
a rougher quality, with a touch of spontaneity. This makes
for a different narrative tone and perception in her oeuvre.
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
reality than her paintings, this does not mean to say that
they are always austere. Far from it, there are touches of
wry humor, too.
Munkhtsetsegs surreal touch in such paintings as Pulse
(2008), Spirit of Survival (2009), and Sacred Offering (2009) is
carried further in the bird image that is Tearing Language No 5.
(2009). Here Munkhtsetseg displays both ne drawings skills
and a vivid imagination. The bird is realized as an illustration
in an anatomy book about strange beings. The inner
workings of the bird are revealed in magnicent detail: It is
part animal, part human. The feet are human legs and the
wings are outstretched human hands; both are skeletal, the
tendon holding the muscle to the bone that adds a peculiar
strength to the skeletal hands. A headless male torso, arms
outstretched, hands clasp a length of human hair, emerges
from the birds abdomen. This birth image, which reminds
one of mythic human/animal connections, adds vividly to
this surreal work.
There is something disturbingly obsessive about this
work. But then Munkhtsetsegs art is not meant to be a
pleasant interlude among sentimental images. It is meant
to confront, boldly and questioningly. In this work she
achieves a sense of drama so different from that in the
narrative of her paintings. At the same time, the entire
Tearing Language series makes us realize that her art, like
her life, is far more substantial than the sum of its parts.
She makes us aware that life is also more than simply
breathing, loving, and constant struggle.
Such notions are further examined in Munkhtsetsegs
recent soft sculptures: I dont tell where I am from, Path,
Body as Tangled Hair in Intermission Space, and Enjoyable
Pleasure (all 2009). I wanted to see some aspects of my

painting in three dimensions, she says. These works

are another signicant step in her exploration of healing
through art: they speak to children, the emotional pain of
loss, physical trauma, and identity.
Although Munkhtsetseg never studied sculpture,
she began to consider it after seeing sculptures by the
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in New York in 2001. But her
inspiration as a sculptor also has its roots in Zanabazars
art. Since childhood, she has admired his Tara sculptures.
Munkhtsetsegs soft sculptures of sewn silk and felt,
however, are far from these inuences. It is clear in these
works that her training in theater design comes into play.
Munkhtsetseg rst makes drawings, then carefully
follows these as she sews (a skill she learned as a young
woman). It is a long process. Sometimes I get lost along
the way. But my mistakes give me good ideas. Sewing
also gives her the freedom of working with soft materials.
It helps me to develop my images.
Monglians love to make things with silk, including
special traditional clothes, deel, for children. I made it for
my son in 1992. I have always wanted to make something
using silk, she says. Sometimes, when I nish a painting, I
feel that I have not expressed all my emotions. So sculpture
becomes another emotional level of my narrative of the
woman/child relationship.
Path, a silver-colored sculpture of a seated, forlorn
faceless baby with its umbilical chord snaking out from
its body, is a powerful work that suggests the terror of
the innocent. This is also true of the gold-colored I dont
tell where I am from. The multi-armed child is seated with
hands covering eyes, ears, and mouth in the manner of I
have nothing, see nothing, and say nothing. Such works
have their origins in paintings such as Spirit of Survival,
Nexus, and Birth Myth (all 2009).
While sculptures such Path and I dont tell where I am
from suggest something of the pain of birth, they also
allude to the artists own personal loss. This is not the
case with her sculptures dealing with contortionists as
in silver and gold Enjoyable Pleasure and in the boldred group in Body as Tangled Hair in Intermission Space
(both 2009). These two works, with their origins in
works such as Reborn (2008) and Pattern of Nature (2009)
speak more to struggle and survival than birth pangs.
Munkhtsetsegs contortionists appear to suggest that
struggle in life is a constant, a necessity for change and
healing.

When I am making soft sculpture, says Munkhtsetseg,

I feel that I am creating a human body by the Lunar
calendar. In the Lunar calendar the human soul exists in
different organs every day. For example, rst the soul exists
in the feet; then the soul exists in knees, and so on.
Mongolian artists feel their cultural loss deeply. How
do a nation and its people heal in the midst of change?
This is a difcult question to answer, according to
Tsendsuren Narangerel. When I was abroad, I saw a lot
of Mongolian cultural items in museums. I felt sad about
that. The loss of culture is incurable. Which also means
spiritual and material loss, he says. We should not repeat
this mistake. For that we have to work hard and to create
art. So in that way art heals.
Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajavs rich personal narrative is
certainly an important statement in the healing process.
Looking at a broad range of her art made since the late
1990s, one realizes always that for her art is as much about
healing as it is about the art itself. Through this the pain
of her loss as a woman is slowly being alleviated. Her
vision is becoming stronger. Her voice is more condent.
Despite this she continues to feel doubtful. It is a necessary
doubt, one that drives her forward to heal and be healed.
Each year, says Munkhtsetseg, I feel I become more of
a complete artist. But even so I always nd myself feeling
that there is something missing. (6)
Notes:

1. Baabar (Bat-Erdene Batbayar), History of Mongolia, Cambridge,

England, The White Horse Press, 1999. The editor Christopher Kaplonski, notes in his Editors Preface, One of his [Baabars] most famous
writings, Buu mart! (Dont 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. Quotations from Tsendsuren Narangerel are taken from the
authors interview with him at the Fine Art Institute of Mongolia in
Ulaanbaatar on April 17, 2009.
3. This is an extended and updated version of an earlier essay. See Ian
Findlay, From The Heart Of Mongolia, Asian Art News, Volume 19
Number 3, May/June 2009, pages 7277.
4. Unless otherwise stated quotations are from interviews with
Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav conducted by the author in Ulaanbaatar between April 14 and April 17, 2009.
5. Zanabazar (16351723), also known as Ondor Gegeen, was the
First Bogd Gegeen. He is considered to be the greatest artist of Mongolia.
6. The author thanks Ms. Delgermaa Ganbat, advocacy Program
Coordinator, the Arts Council of Mongolia, and Ms. Ts. Yuno for their
generous help with interpreting while in Ulaanbaatar.
Copyright Ian Findlay-Brown 2009

Left: Intermission Series - Moving Air (2008)

Reborn (2008)

200 x 150 cm
Oil

180 x 150 cm
Oil

On the Mountain (2000)

Messenger (2002)

150 x 180 cm
Oil

150 x 180 cm
Oil

Left: Pulse (2008)

Liberation (2008)

180 x 150 cm
Oil

160 x 150 cm
Oil

In and Out (2008)

Birth Myth (2009)

180 x 160 cm
Oil

200 x 120 cm
Mixed Media

Left: Hair Performance: I Am Roots (2009)

Hair Performance: I am Protected (2009)

160 x 150 cm
Oil

160 x 150 cm
Oil

Endless Desire (2008)

Nowever (2002)

250 x 150 cm
Oil

120 x 200 cm
Oil

Hair Performance - Sand Dunes (2009)

150 x 300
Oil

Spirit of Survival (2009)

Episode of Decision No 1 (2008)

200 x 150 cm
Oil

90 x 100 cm
Oil

Tangled Hair (2009)

90 x 100 cm
Oil

Episode of Decision No 2 (2008)

90 x 100 cm
Oil

Right: Pattern of Nature (2009)

180 x 150 cm
Oil

The Gift (2009)

Sacred Offering (2009)

140 x 90 cm
Oil

180 x 150 cm
Oil

Contemplation (2009)

Sound of Universe (2009)

[size to follow]
Oil

180 x 120 cm
Oil

MISSING IMAGE

Intermission space (2009)

180 x 120 cm
Oil

Silence Series No 1
(2009)
Sa Paper

Silence Series No 4 (2009)

Nexus (2009)

Sa Paper

Oil

Tearing Languaje Series No 5

80 x 60 cm
Sa Paper

Tearing Languaje Series No 9

80 x 60 cm
Sa Paper

Right: Tearing Languaje Series No 13

80 x 60 cm
Sa Paper

Tearing Languaje Series No 2

I Dont Tell Where Im From

80 x 60 cm
Sa Paper

Soft Sculpture

Left: Path (2009)

Body and Tangled Hair in Intermission Space (2009)

Soft Sculpture

Soft Sculpture

Enjoyable Pleasure (2009)

Soft Sculpture

Bio TEXT PENDING

Contact TEXT PENDING

Acknoledges TEXT PENDING

Teo + Namfah Gallery