VENICE.- Mongolia participates in the 61st Venice Biennale with its national pavilion titled Entanglements: Connectivities Across Borders. The exhibition is distinguished by its approach of redefining Mongolia not as a fixed geography, but as a dynamic space shaped by historical and contemporary networks of exchange and dialogue.
Curated by Uranchimeg Tsultem with co-curator Thomas Eller, the pavilion presents works by contemporary Mongolian artists Dorjderem Davaa, Gerelkhuu Ganbold, Nomin Bold, and Tuguldur Yondonjamts. Their multimedia artworks demonstrate how the expansive Eurasian connections once facilitated by the Mongol Empire continue to inform the worldviews that shape their contemporary art practices.
Historically, Italian city-states, such as Venice, had important channels of connectivities with the Mongol Empire through trade, commerce, diplomatic relations and artistic influences. Venice, as a maritime republic and a key node in the Silk Road network, was deeply intertwined with Mongol cultures—most famously through the travels of Marco Polo (1254-1324), who spent 17 years at the court of Khubilai Khaan (1216-1294), among many others.
The exhibition explores how these Eurasian networks translate into the contemporary artistic practices and affect the formations of new worldviews. The legacy of religious pluralism, mobility, and interaction find contemporary articulation in the practices of these Mongolian artists whose work reclaims history not as distant inheritance but as a living framework for the present. Rejecting a view of Mongolian culture as static or singular, the Pavilion foregrounds multiplicity as foundational to this exhibition—presented and seen in sheer diversity of material and aesthetic strategies, of topics and relationships explored, hierarchies and boundaries dismantled.
Each participating artist engages in these ideas through distinct approaches. Weaving Buddhist iconography, Christian motifs or incorporating shamanic chants and symbols, Gerelkhuu Ganbold’s paintings in Mongol Zurag style feature dense, stratified compositions and lavish imagery that challenge linear interpretation. Dorjderem Davaa’s felt installations and Nomin Bold’s textile works suggest porous borders, cyclicality of life and death, while also invoking invisible entities that are indispensable and are constantly present. The two artists’ paintings, some including historically significant lapis lazuli pigment, feature spaces that are neither fully terrestrial nor transcendent, reflecting Mongolian cosmology’s emphasis on thresholds and permeability. Tuguldur’s time-based media and installations investigate various forms of communications, enacted by the artist or signaled through his multiple scripts, codes, and notations—such as binary language among others –to reject rigid boundaries between the human and nonhuman, the living and the ancestral, the material and the immaterial.
Across the Pavilion, materials such as felt, woven fabrics, pigment, and digital media operate as conduits between past and present. These artists use material traditions not as a nostalgic revival but to assert Mongolia’s active role in shaping and partaking in global cultural histories. By foregrounding these material histories, the Pavilion aligns with decolonial efforts to rewrite global art history as entangled rather than hierarchical. In an era marked by political divisions, ecological crises, and reinforced borders, “Entanglements” seeks to illuminate how cultures connect, share, and compromise.
Aligned with the Biennale’s 2026 theme, “In Minor Keys,” the exhibition emphasizes often overlooked narratives beyond dominant historical accounts. At a time when global discourse is increasingly shaped by division, displacement, and ecological precarity, this exhibition offers a counter-narrative rooted in shared geographies, cultural exchange, and the resilience of nomadic worldviews.
