Uranchimeg Tsultem

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/35565

Global Nomadic Art Project: East Asian Ecologies of Environmental Art

Dr. Uranchimeg Tsultem is a scholar of Mongolian art and culture whose research focuses mainly on Buddhist art and architecture and contemporary Asian art. Dr. Tsultem’s research and publications include topics on ancient stone monuments in Mongolian steppes, a thirteenth-century Chinggis Khan’s portrait at National Palace Museum in Taiwan, a nineteenth-century mobile monastery Urga (Ikh Khüree), art of 1960s in Mongolia and contemporary Asian artists’ relationship to their art traditions.

The discourse of the Anthropocene is central to the discussion of climate change and environmental issues, which are, according to art historian T. J. Demos, “first and foremost a political crisis (italics are original)” that is continued based on the colonialist attitudes of “destructive and utilitarian, idealized and exoticized…structuring of nature” (Demos 2016). Calling for “decolonizing nature,” he further critiques neoliberal governments and the global capital circulation markets they maintain for corporations as corrupted systems which effectively encourage depletion of natural resources and ecological destruction for the sake of economic wealth.

Dr. Tsultem's approach to the Anthropocene is not limited to the analysis of political failures of neoliberalism. Viewing the Anthropocene as “lived experience,” as historian Jason Kelly recently discussed (Kelly 2018), her research asks how we can further people’s thinking about nature as an inseparable part of our daily lives and repair – in practice and in academic discourse– the nature-culture divide. Her research introduces environmental projects conducted in East Asia as part of environmental consciousness and (re)connection with nature. During the 2023 TRIP Awards and Fall Showcase, she introduced a Mongolian artist Amarsaikhan (aka Amara) and his artwork in 2019-2023 within an international outreach of a South-Korean environmental Global Nomadic Art Project (GNAP), which aims to address the climate change from alternative perspectives of subjectivity and personal reflections on nature around the world. She analyzes these approaches to the Anthropocene with the innovative work on climate crisis by Stefan Petranek at Herron.

Dr. Tsultem's translation of research into a better understanding of how climate change and other environmental issues are directly tied to human impact is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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    Buddhist Archeology in Mongolia: Zanabazar and the Géluk Diaspora beyond Tibet
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    This article discusses a Khalkha reincarnate ruler, the First Jebtsundampa Zanabazar, who is commonly believed to be a Géluk protagonist whose alliance with the Dalai and Panchen Lamas was crucial to the dissemination of Buddhism in Khalkha Mongolia. Zanabazar’s Géluk affiliation, however, is a later Qing-Géluk construct to divert the initial Khalkha vision of him as a reincarnation of the Jonang historian Tāranātha (1575–1634). Whereas several scholars have discussed the political significance of Zanabazar’s reincarnation based only on textual sources, this article takes an interdisciplinary approach to discuss, in addition to textual sources, visual records that include Zanabazar’s portraits and current findings from an ongoing excavation of Zanabazar’s Saridag Monastery. Clay sculptures and Zanabazar’s own writings, heretofore little studied, suggest that Zanabazar’s open approach to sectarian affiliations and his vision, akin to Tsongkhapa’s, were inclusive of several traditions rather than being limited to a single one.
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    Buddhist Revelations in Davaakhuugin Soyolmaa’s Contemporary Mongolian Art
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    In 1990, a seven-decade socialist taboo on religion was lifted in newly transforming Mongolia, where democratic reforms and a peaceful transition to a market economy and multiparty government system were taking place. The country entered into a critical period of transition in 1992, when revisions to the constitution changed the Mongolian People’s Republic into the Republic of Mongolia. While political studies of this transitional period have been conducted, along with studies of the economic boost of 2008, very little has been written about Mongolian art since 1990. This essay explores that relatively untrodden ground by focusing on contemporary artist Davaakhuugin Soyolmaa (b. 1977) (figure 1), whose work exemplifies the revival of Buddhist art and culture in contemporary Mongolia.
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    Cartographic Anxieties in Mongolia: The Bogd Khan’s Picture-Map
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2016) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    This article extends cartography into ethnographic and representational practices for territorial inclusion (Hostetler 2005) and nation building (Krishna 1994). Outer Mongolia, a vassal state of the Qing Empire until 1911, produced ethnographic paintings intended as new cartographic visuals around the time of its independence. Mongolia’s last ruler, the Bogd Khan (1870–1924) commissioned the artist Balduugin Sharav to produce a large painting of the Mongol countryside titled Daily Events, a work that constitutes an unusual cartographic “picture-map” (Paul Harvey 1980) intended for a special public display. The work (now known as One Day in Mongolia) depicts the Mongolian people as a distinct ethnic group in quotidian scenes of Central Mongolian (Khalkha) nomadic life. This article demonstrates how the covert connections between the scenes together construct a Buddhist didactic narrative of the Wheel of Life, and argues that this picture-map was the result of the Tibetan-born ruler’s anxieties over ethnic identity, national unity, and the survival of his people, who strove for independence from the Qing, as well as their safe positioning vis-à-vis new political neighbors.
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    Introduction to “Buddhist Art of Mongolia: Cross-Cultural Connections, Discoveries, and Interpretations”
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    A comparative and analytical discussion of Mongolian Buddhist art is a long overdue project. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nyam-Osoryn Tsultem’s lavishly illustrated publications broke ground for the study of Mongolian Buddhist art.1 His five-volume work was organized by genre (painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts) and included a monograph on a single artist, Zanabazar (Tsultem 1982a, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989). Tsultem’s books introduced readers to the major Buddhist art centers and sites, artists and their works, techniques, media, and styles. He developed and wrote extensively about his concepts of “schools”—including the school of Zanabazar and the school of Ikh Khüree—inspired by Mongolian ger- (yurt-) based education, the artists’ teacherdisciple or preceptor-apprentice relationships, and monastic workshops for rituals and production of art. The very concept of “schools” and its underpinning methodology itself derives from the Medieval European practice of workshops and, for example, the model of scuola (school) evidenced in Italy. Tsultem borrowed the term and the concept from Russian art-historical literature.
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    Political Ecology in Baatarzorig’s Art: Mongolia Is in Business
    (Sternberg Press, 2018) Tsultem, Uranchimeg
    This article will focus on Baatra’s two paintings, the Nomad (2013) and MGL (2018) and will argue that Baatra’s works demonstrate that the marketization of nature is indeed a part of neoliberalism in Mongolia, and thus support the geographer Neil Smith’s argument of the “capitalization of nature.” Such artistic engagement with environmental issues can also be seen internationally, and proves these issues are relevant beyond the Mongolian focus of the works concerned. How, then, does Baatarzorig help us to advance the discussion of political ecology seen in the contemporary artistic practices around the globe, and beyond Euramerica?
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    Zanabazar (1635-1723): Vajrayāna Art and the State in Medieval Mongolia
    (Oxford University Press, 2015) Tsultem, Uranchimeg
    The First Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu (T. rJe btsun dam pa sprul sku) Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar is the most celebrated person in the history of Mongolian Buddhism, whose activities marked the important moments in the Mongolian politics, history, and cultural life, as they heralded the new era for the Mongols. His masterpieces of Buddhist sculptures exhibit a sophisticated accomplishment of the Buddhist iconometrical canon, a craftsmanship of the highest quality, and a refined, yet unfettered virtuosity. Zanabazar is believed to have single-handedly brought the tradition of Vajrayāna Buddhism to the late medieval Mongolia. Buddhist rituals, texts, temple construction, Buddhist art, and even designs for Mongolian monastic robes are all attributed to his genius. He also introduced to Mongolia the artistic forms of Buddhist deities, such as the Five Tath›gatas, Maitreya, Twenty-One T›r›s, Vajradhara, Vajrasattva, and others. They constitute a salient hallmark of his careful selection of the deities, their forms, and their representation. These deities and their forms of representation were unique to Zanabazar.