Born 1983, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Lives and works in Ulaanbaatar

In Nomads 2014, Baatarzorig Batjargal draws on the techniques of Mongol zurag painting to address the broader history of Mongolia's development over the past century. Contemporary Mongol zurag painting revives an early twentieth-century style that developed during the Mongolian independence movement to express the ideals of secular nationalism. Since the 1990s, Mongol zurag has re-emerged and been taken up by a new generation of practitioners who have found within it the means to address the contradictions of their own lives at a time of unprecedented urbanisation. Baatarzorig's paintings are particularly concerned with the loss of traditional heritage through a succession of regimes, from the bloody purges and ascetic culture of Soviet-style communism to the rising inequalities and empty consumerism of global capitalism. Nomads 2014 allegorises Mongolia's march through the ages, depicting the journey of an immense cast of characters that includes gods and holy men, artists and intellectuals, warriors and noblemen, politicians and oligarchs, sumo wrestlers and robots.