Enkhbold Togmidshiirev
APT9
Born 1978 Övörkhangai Province, Mongolia
Lives and works in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Enkhbold Togmidshiirev is known for his large-scale, monochromatic canvases and his improvised performances with portable variations on the design of the traditional Mongolian ger or yurt. This dwelling creates a temporary home and spiritual space in which the artist can go about his activities, performing a role that is both familiar and critically self-orientalising. His performances have taken place on frozen steppes, in the desert, at the edge of the sea, by the side of a highway and in the streets and squares of European cities, in visual harmony with their surroundings at times, in apparent contrast at others. His restrained colour-field paintings are executed in materials derived from Mongolian nomadic culture, including horse dung, felt, shrubs, ash, rust, sheep skin and tripe. These materials are typically sourced from the countryside, when the artist returns to his homeland, and provide him with a shifting palette whose materiality preserves a strong connection with Mongolian life.
Enkhbold Togmidshiirev / Mongolia b.1978 / Benevolence 2013 / Horse dung and silk on canvas / 200 x 400cm / © The artist / Image courtesy: The artist and 976 Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar
The ger, a large circular tent with a collapsible wooden infrastructure, is robust and portable, highly suited both to a nomadic lifestyle and to low-cost living in Mongolia’s crowded capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Enkhbold has created a number of personalised structures derived from the ger form, with which he performs as a way of developing a connection with his surroundings. These actions have taken place in a range of settings around the world, from the desert to urban centres. The spherical Blue Sentient 2015 features in an APT9 opening weekend performance, and as a sculptural installation in the Gallery.
Enkhbold’s restrained colour-field paintings incorporate unusual media – horse dung, felt, shrubs, ash, rust, sheep skin and tripe – which are either laid over the canvas or worked into its fibres. He also incorporates collage into his paintings, while fabrics such as cotton, silk and hessian vary their surfaces. Their materiality, like the ger performances they complement, preserves a strong connection
with both traditional and contemporary Mongolian life.
