WONDER MAGAZINE: Gerelkhuu Ganbold – The Visual Narrator
by Amanda Sheppard
Aimless journey. Intruder of the past. Soldiers who don’t know themselves. These are the eponymous titles of Gerelkhuu Ganbold’s paintings. The Mongolian artist’s pieces exude a fierce yet alluring quality, emblematic of the country’s tumultuous, militarised history and the notion of an uncertain future. We speak about the fragility of urban life, the various ways to identify a home, and more…
A contemporary painter using the traditional Mongol Zurag technique, depicting folklore, war motifs and historic imagery in a modern and innovative way, Ganbold is one of the artists contributing to Ulan Bator’s growing reputation as a cultural capital. A home grown talent and former student of the University of Art & Culture, he has since exhibited his works internationally, in such places as Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and New Mexico.
But it is the city of Ulan Bator in which he creates, and where key influences on his painting can be identified. The city’s population has soared, with the sprawling Ger district continuing to grow as people seek warmer climes and the promise of a new life away from the steppe. The government have placed a ban on further migration for a year in an attempt to reduce air pollution in the capital, though whether such an implementation will be successful remains to be seen.