Woman in Silence
Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav is one of the most famous female Mongolian painters. Her characters are women, especially herself. When I see her paintings, I feel like I’m travelling deep inside of a woman’s heart.
J.Munkhtsetseg, like many of her characters, has long hair. Ancient Mongolians believe that hair absorbed the knowledge and feelings of its owner. So they could express themselves through their hair.
J.Munkhtsetseg was born in 1967 in Mongolia. She graduated from the College of Fine Art in 1986 and graduated from Academy of Theatre Art in Belarus in 1998.
“Asian Art News” one of Asia’s top art magazines, published an article about her and covered one of her works in 2009. British art critic Ian Findlay wrote about her and this portion of his article shows us that how great of an artist she truly is:
“Munkhtsetseg found her subject in women -- steely, bare-breasted women -- who represent a rejection of totalitarianism’s puritanical propaganda in which women, even though at the forefront of society, never appear to be equal to men. These women, carefully constructed in the artist’s mind, are then deconstructed on canvas to represent women’s spiritual freedom and their relationship to the world around them in all its complexity. Women in Mongolia, Munkhtsetseg notes, have always been equal and this is why she doesn’t try to take a feminist point of view.
‘I just express what I think and feel. It is up to the viewer to interpret what they see. Mongolians have always respected women as equals,’ she says. ‘Women have the right to rule the household and the state. When men, in the past, went to war, women controlled everything. In traditional life men had to listen to women. So all my paintings represent the power of women.’
Woman as her central subject has given Munkhtsetseg the opportunity to create an uncompromising narrative through which to explore questions of spirituality, birth and death, female sexuality, personal disappointment, and motherhood. To examine these she uses numerous symbols from Mongolia’s rich cultural heritage. The birds, clothing, children, traditional Mongolian medicine, legends and myths on the origins of the world, humankind’s relationship to nature and animals, and the striking traditional hairstyle known as ehkner us, which means ‘married woman’s hairstyle,’ all inform her figurative art, recent abstractions, and representational collages and drawings.
The power flowing from Munkhtsetseg’s bold figures is in stark contrast to her slight physical presence that hides a steely determination. She observes and listens intently. Her slim hands exude an appealing combination of fragility and strength. She wields a brush thick with paint and tears paper for her collages with equal passion. When the results are not to her liking, she simply begins again, working until she is satisfied. When she is happy with the results, she is never boastful. Indeed, Munkhtsetseg (“Mugi” to her friends) has a sense of humility about her that is memorable. For all her accomplishments, since the mid-1980s, she says simply, ‘It is only during the past five years that I have considered myself an artist. Before, I only saw myself as an artist in training.’
Munkhtsetseg’s portraits of women are not gentle or refined or timid. They are tough, highly textured, boldly colored studies of characters that exude powerful emotions. While she speaks clearly to her own culture, she is also addressing womankind far beyond it. Her commanding protagonists are by turns also absolutely still and animated by tension in their fluid geometry. This is accentuated by her use of strong blues, reds, browns, and greens. This is especially true of her works in which children and giving birth sit at very heart of her narrative,” wrote Findlay.
J.Munkhtsetseg, like many of her characters, has long hair. Ancient Mongolians believe that hair absorbed the knowledge and feelings of its owner. So they could express themselves through their hair.
J.Munkhtsetseg was born in 1967 in Mongolia. She graduated from the College of Fine Art in 1986 and graduated from Academy of Theatre Art in Belarus in 1998.
“Asian Art News” one of Asia’s top art magazines, published an article about her and covered one of her works in 2009. British art critic Ian Findlay wrote about her and this portion of his article shows us that how great of an artist she truly is:
“Munkhtsetseg found her subject in women -- steely, bare-breasted women -- who represent a rejection of totalitarianism’s puritanical propaganda in which women, even though at the forefront of society, never appear to be equal to men. These women, carefully constructed in the artist’s mind, are then deconstructed on canvas to represent women’s spiritual freedom and their relationship to the world around them in all its complexity. Women in Mongolia, Munkhtsetseg notes, have always been equal and this is why she doesn’t try to take a feminist point of view.
‘I just express what I think and feel. It is up to the viewer to interpret what they see. Mongolians have always respected women as equals,’ she says. ‘Women have the right to rule the household and the state. When men, in the past, went to war, women controlled everything. In traditional life men had to listen to women. So all my paintings represent the power of women.’
Woman as her central subject has given Munkhtsetseg the opportunity to create an uncompromising narrative through which to explore questions of spirituality, birth and death, female sexuality, personal disappointment, and motherhood. To examine these she uses numerous symbols from Mongolia’s rich cultural heritage. The birds, clothing, children, traditional Mongolian medicine, legends and myths on the origins of the world, humankind’s relationship to nature and animals, and the striking traditional hairstyle known as ehkner us, which means ‘married woman’s hairstyle,’ all inform her figurative art, recent abstractions, and representational collages and drawings.
The power flowing from Munkhtsetseg’s bold figures is in stark contrast to her slight physical presence that hides a steely determination. She observes and listens intently. Her slim hands exude an appealing combination of fragility and strength. She wields a brush thick with paint and tears paper for her collages with equal passion. When the results are not to her liking, she simply begins again, working until she is satisfied. When she is happy with the results, she is never boastful. Indeed, Munkhtsetseg (“Mugi” to her friends) has a sense of humility about her that is memorable. For all her accomplishments, since the mid-1980s, she says simply, ‘It is only during the past five years that I have considered myself an artist. Before, I only saw myself as an artist in training.’
Munkhtsetseg’s portraits of women are not gentle or refined or timid. They are tough, highly textured, boldly colored studies of characters that exude powerful emotions. While she speaks clearly to her own culture, she is also addressing womankind far beyond it. Her commanding protagonists are by turns also absolutely still and animated by tension in their fluid geometry. This is accentuated by her use of strong blues, reds, browns, and greens. This is especially true of her works in which children and giving birth sit at very heart of her narrative,” wrote Findlay.
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