An essay by Tsendpurev Tsegmid, made available by Afterall Journal for the duration of Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi): Art, Anthropology and Mongol Futurism fiveheads.art
1998 was my first year as an art student. I was only eighteen years old. Art in Mongolia was taught as something you learn how to make. There were rules to follow: art was meant to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. At the time, I was studying Mongol zurag, a strict form of miniature painting derived from Buddhist thangka art, and the idea of producing artworks beyond the borders of my stretched cotton was unimaginable for me.1 This changed when Dalkh-Ochir,2 one of the founding members of the Green Horse Society, started to visit our art school to meet with students. My teacher warned us about him and told us not to meet with him or listen to his words. Allegedly, his words could confuse young art students about what art was, and rumour had it that we were in danger of being ‘brainwashed and losing our way’. There was this implicit fear of the unknown amongst some of our teachers, which inevitably led to an intense fascination in students like me. I became curious about the development of contemporary art and became interested in learning what the Green Horse Society’s founders had to say about it. Since then, the enigma surrounding this group hasn’t faded and my naïve interest has gradually turned into one of my academic research enquiries.
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read more at: https://afterall.org/journal/issue.44/early-contemporary-art-in-post-soviet-mongolia-where-is-the-green-horse-galloping-now-
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF OTHER ANIMALS 