THE UB POST
EDITION
128 (1376)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014
PAGE 10 ARTS & CULTURE
GODO
CAPTURES THE FUNDAMENTAL DUALITY
OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
By
EMMA ELLIS
In her current
976 Art Gallery show, “The Legend of the Swallow” artist D.Bayartsetseg
(known as Godo) employs the basic unit of art making –
the line, the creation of positive and negative space – to pose fundamental
questions about our perceptions.
Godo’s pieces in ‘The Legend of the
Swallow” are quite diverse, ranging from a large sheet of paper densely covered
in finely inked lines to a suspended white deel (Mongolian traditional
costume). But perhaps most striking is the large collection of small sparrow
drawings, each in its own frame, arranged side by side in a long line that
bends around the gallery space, their sequence suggesting that the swallows
arcing across each piece somehow form a narrative.
Godo’s work seems to occupy liminal spaces. Though she tries to make the lines that characterize most of her pieces as straight as possible, when making them, Godo focuses on her breath and heartbeat, and as such, they waver organically. “People always ask what element they are,” says Godo. “But I cannot say if they are wind or water.” A white deel suspended above the floor has a certain ghostly quality, but also has concrete cultural and temporal grounding as a traditional Mongolian garment.
But perhaps most complex and
resonant are the narrative-like swallow images. Written narrative, namely Oscar
Wilde’s short story, “The Happy Prince” and the poem “A Requiem of the warrior
Gilgudei” from Altan Tobchi, was Godo’s source material for this exhibition.
Godo is an artist frequently inspired by written work, feeling in it the same
energy she seeks to express in her own. In “The Legend of the Swallow,” this is
borne out in the ambiguous multiplicity shared by these texts and Godo’s
pieces.
In both “The Happy Prince” and “A
Requiem of the warrior Gilgudei” swallows are simultaneously connected with the
earthly – death, of the swallow itself and of the body of Chinggis Khaan – and
the unearthly, divine charity and the departure of the soul. Our emotional
response depends on whether one views those moments that reinforce life’s
ephemerality as triumphant or tragic. It is this duality, a fundamental
duality of the human experience that Godo has captured in evoking the swallow’s
image. As such, “The Legend of the Swallow” is not only a virtuoso experiment
in the line, but also in the line between grief and remembrance.
The exhibition
will be open through November 16, at 976 Art Gallery.
