Floating Mountain

Label

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu fills the flat and decorated space on her canvas with multiple images that each have personal significance for her. We see references to tea culture, mining, mythical beasts, more common animals, and a woman with a telescope atop the mountain. Her approach, referred to as the Mongol Zurag style, is essentially a contemporary revision of earlier styles in Buddhist art witnessed in Thanka painting. In a manner reminiscent of the poetic use of language, Dagvasambuu creates images that are individually distinct, while in combination, their meaning becomes more oblique or allusive. |

Growing up in a rapidly modernizing Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu witnessed the transformation of this locale from a nomadic community to a busy city. With a sense of nostalgia, then, Dagvasambuu here portrays traditional teapots in her own studio, floating at the bottom of a mythical mountain. While human avarice drove the relentless mining of this land in search of wealth, symbolized by the gold coins in the image, Dagvasambuu’s hope for a more balanced future relationship between human and nature is embodied by the female deity sitting on the mountaintop and gazing beyond the manmade landscape.

From the 2024 exhibition Attitude of Coexistence: Non-Humans in East Asian Art, curated by Haely Chang, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art

Course History

Studio Art 25.01, Painting I, Jen Caine, Fall 2023

Studio Art 25.01, Painting I, Jen Caine, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

Attitude of Coexistence: Non-humans in East Asian Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 5-June 29, 2025.

Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu (Mongolia): Ancient Myths and Personal Stories, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, New York, September 8 - October 10, 2023.

Provenance

The artist, Ulaanbataar, Mongolia; to Sapar Contemporary, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2024.

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