Encountering Landscape, Rethinking Time
International Artist Residency — Menen Steppe, Eastern Mongolia
Oir Art Hub organized its international artist residency on the vast Menen Steppe of eastern Mongolia. Bringing together four international and three Mongolian artists, the residency explored the relationship between landscape, artistic practice, movement, and time through a shared journey across one of Mongolia’s most expansive steppes.
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The journey itself became an essential part of the artistic process. Reaching the residency site required travelling more than 500 kilometres on unpaved roads, with a total journey of over 40 hours round trip in summer temperatures of around 36°C. Long hours of driving across rough terrain became a shared experience for all participants, demanding patience, endurance, adaptability—and a willingness to embrace the unknown.
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For hours, the only visible elements were the meeting of sky and earth, occasionally interrupted by nomadic families, herds of horses and livestock, and distant tracks crossing the grasslands. T
he immense scale of the steppe gradually changed familiar perceptions of distance and time. Removed from the pace and comforts of urban life, the participants entered a slower rhythm dictated by the landscape itself. These shared experiences and challenges strengthened relationships within the group and created a supportive atmosphere that became an important part of the residency.
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At the midpoint of the journey, the group arrived at Buir Lake, where the artists stayed for several days to develop artworks, conduct research, and reflect on their experiences.
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After days of travelling through the seemingly endless steppe, encountering the lake was both unexpected and transformative. Set within the vast grasslands, Buir Lake appeared almost surreal—more like an inland sea than a typical Mongolian landscape. The blue of the water merged with the equally expansive sky, at times making the horizon almost disappear.
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Changing light, reflections on the water, fresh green algae, white shells, and subtle shifts in colour offered a completely different sensory environment while remaining deeply connected to the surrounding steppe. The lake became another expression of the same landscape: only the material had changed, from earth to water, while the sense of openness, silence, and infinity remained.
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Throughout the residency, artists responded to the landscape through installation, site-specific intervention, drawing, video, research, observation, and documentation. Some created works directly within the landscape, treating the steppe and lake not simply as settings, but as active elements in their artistic process. Others gathered materials and developed ideas that will continue to evolve into future works.
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The residency demonstrated that artistic research can emerge not only from the studio, but also through movement, shared experience, conversation, and sustained attention to a place. The journey, the landscape, and the encounters along the way became as significant as the completed artworks themselves.
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The residency resulted in new site-specific works and installations, initiated long-term artistic research, strengthened collaboration between Mongolian and international artists, and opened new ways of understanding the Menen Steppe and Buir Lake as places of artistic inquiry. Most importantly, it created lasting connections among the participants and experiences that will continue to resonate beyond the residency itself.
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Some experiences need time to unfold. The significance of this residency cannot be measured solely by the works created during the programme, but also by the traces the journey leaves in the artists’ memories and future practices.
The days spent crossing the Menen Steppe and at Buir Lake have become part of a shared experience—one that will continue to shape their artistic thinking and creative work long after the journey has ended.
Artistic Director & Curator
Ulziibat Enkhtur
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Artists
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Aurélie Cornaz (Switzerland)
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Ariuntuya Jambaldorj (Mongolia)
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Munkh-Erdene Munkhzorig (Mongolia)
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Urangoo Ider (Mongolia)
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Ilgiz Edilson (Kyrgyzstan)
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Eva Slabá (Czech Republic)
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Carla Rump (Netherlands)
Documentation & Logistics
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Enkhsuren Erdenebat
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Unurbat Enkhtur
​Following the residency, the international artists visited exhibitions, museums, and other artistic and cultural sites in Ulaanbaatar, providing further opportunities to engage with Mongolia's contemporary art scene and cultural heritage.
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To conclude the programme, Oir Art Hub organized a public artist talk in which participants presented their artistic practices, shared their experiences of the residency, and reflected on the works and research they developed during their time on the Menen Steppe and at Buir Lake. The event created an opportunity for dialogue between the artists and the local public, extending the residency's exchange beyond the field and into the wider artistic community.
Discover the works
White Plain
Ariuntuya Jambaldorj
Year: 2026
Dimensions: 30 × 400 × 400 cm
Material: Freshwater mussel valves gathered from the lakeshore (Cristaria plicata valves)
Location: Shore of Buir Lake / Steppes of Menen / Mongolia
White mussel valves, gathered from the shore, are scattered back across the sand of the lakeshore.
Tsagaan Tal — “White Plain” — is an attempt to give form, through organic material, through shell
alone, to the space, the relations, and the worldview folded into a single word of the Mongolian
language: tal.
Crossing the Menen steppe over the course of a single day, sky and earth embrace one another
along the horizon. When the low grass we passed through opened into a stretch of tall grass, I felt
adrift, as if floating on a vast sea of grass. The plain stretches beyond sight — a boundless expanse
in which the gaze loses its hold, an open space with no edge to rest upon.
In Mongolian, a level, unbroken expanse without hill or rise is likened to a “white plain,” and
because the shells themselves are white, I chose Tsagaan Tal as the name of this installation.
Tal names a wide, level land with little variation of hill or hollow. Yet the same word branches into
many meanings — tal (a half, a counterpart), örööl (the other half), ar tal (the back, backup), esreg
tal (the opposite side), nögöö tal (the other party), taltsakh (to take sides), manai tal (our side), sain
tal (the good side), tal kharakh (to show favour), etsgiin tal (the father's side), nüür tal olokh (to get
on someone's good side). Seen this way, it seems to reveal how we perceive all things as a whole —
as mutually bound and interdependent.
The form of the shell, splitting symmetrically into two halves — two tal — yet remaining one body,
appears to hold this same logic within its structure.
Dragon Totem
Ariuntuya Jambaldorj
Year: 2026
Material: Freshwater mussel valves gathered from the lakeshore (Cristaria plicata valves)
Location: Shore of Buir Lake / Steppes of Menen / Mongolia
The Resistance of the Horizon
Ilgiz Edilson
Year: 2026
Material: Canvas, oil painting
Location: Shore of Buir Lake / The Steppes of Menen / Mongolia
I grew up in Kyrgyzstan, among mountain gorges and crystal-clear rivers. Mountains always offer a place to hide: to find shade, to take cover behind a slope, to feel the protection of the landscape. Embarking on this residency, I felt a deep trepidation about facing the completely open space of Mongolia.
In the steppe, it is impossible to hide. There is no shelter here — neither from the scorching sun, nor from yourself.
Modern human life today is often an escape. We escape into social media, into endless work, into routine, just to avoid an honest dialogue with ourselves in the "here and now." We hide from our weaknesses. The steppe, however, uncompromisingly strips us of this ability.
Over five days and two thousand kilometers of travel, it completely laid bare reality. At first, clouds drifted across the sky — anxious, like a swarm of endless thoughts. But then the sky cleared, leaving only a piercingly blue canvas and a green void.
With this void came a ringing exhaustion — from past failures, suppressed emotions, and life's hardships. The mountaineer inside me desperately resisted the inability to exit this space. Tension locked my jaw until it creaked. I was angry at my own helplessness in the face of this discomfort.
And then, I stopped running. I closed my eyes, placed my hand on my heart, and listened to the beats driving my blood.
At that moment, the steppe blurred and merged with the sky. The resistance receded. Warmth filled my body, my temples pulsed, and a total acceptance arrived. Control was no longer needed — only the merging of my spirit and body with this infinite horizon.
This painting is a visual documentation of my internal transition.
Please look at the lower part of the canvas. This strict geometric mosaic of polygons and fragments is not just a landscape. Every complex, jagged figure here captures the rigidity of resistance, that very physical tension and anger.
Above, you see clouds, but they are trapped within rigid rectangles. This is a visualization of the trap of our thoughts. They are no longer free forms, but containers of our illusions, our attempts to escape reality, halted and structured here.
And the dominant, pulsating blue hue is the color of that very sky that swallowed the steppe. A symbol of final humility, the acceptance of one's weaknesses, and merging with eternity.
Confluence
Aurélie Cornaz
Year: 2026
Material: Branch, grass, metal, rope, and twine.
Location: Shore of Buir Lake / The Steppes of Menen / Mongolia
At the heart of nature, I wanted to give form to the invisible: the moment when two paths recognize one another. Two currents, water and air, carrying their own stories, rhythms, and memories, draw close without colliding. They brush against one another, welcome each other, and then surrender to one another until they become a single, subtle element, merging effortlessly.
Confluence is a silent language. It teaches us that encounter does not erase differences; it transforms them into a new kind of strength. What was once separate becomes broader, deeper, more alive.
This work invites us to contemplate that fragile moment when boundaries disappear. Where two impulses meet, a single movement is born—a presence that still carries the memory of each, while opening a new path. An invitation to the space between the outer and the inner, where they come together.
In nature, nothing is ever lost. When two elements unite, they become a river, form a horizon, a shared momentum toward the unknown. This is the poetry of encounter that this creation seeks to reveal: the beauty of what is no longer two, but one. The mind and the body, the inner and the outer—duality becoming unity.
Let it be the sea
Urangoo Ider
Year: 2026
Material: Paper, branches, trash
Location: Shore of Buir Lake / The Steppes of Menen / Mongolia
Let it be the sea,
and let everything drift like boats.
Let it be the sky,
and let everything pass like clouds.
Let it be the sun,
its gentle light resting softly on the edges of our lashes.
Let it be water,
flowing slowly and quietly like a stream.
Let it be the wind,
brushing against our cheeks,
inviting us to breathe deeply.
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Life is not a destination; it is a journey.
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Throughout our lives, we carry our emotions, thoughts, hopes, and fears with us. In the end, it is not the places we reach that define who we are, but the countless moments along the way—the quiet moments, the conversations, the challenges, the laughter, the tears, and all the little moments that shape us.
No matter how ordinary an experience may seem, each one leaves a mark on us. Together, these moments weave the story of our lives and remind us that growth is not something we eventually arrive at. Growth is the journey itself.
