Borte Batbold is a first-generation Mongolian-American artist interested in ideas of land and mourning. Her work finds form through research, writing, and archival-based exploration. Known as the “Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” their relationship to ‘homeland’ is deeply informed by an ideology in which Mongol people have a kindred connection to the natural environment.

In a post-USSR context, Batbold is interested in exploring issues of labor and environmental violence. This past year, she examined Mongolia’s growing mining industry and how it relates to ideas of land, capital, and national consciousness, as well as personal and cultural experiences of death and mourning. Through rewritten mythologies and transformed funerary rites, Batbold’s works are my attempt at giving language to the narrative gaps, ruptures, and silences intrinsic to histories of colonialism, exile, and grief.

Newly relocated to Minnesota, she is eager to build a community of fellow artists, writers, and cultural workers invested in the intersections of racial and environmental justice. Through an ethos of making that centers on our collective growth and healing, Batbold hopes to reimagine the roles and responsibilities of artists and cultural institutions towards their communities.