On June 30th, 2009, several of the foremost members of Mongolia's literary community gathered (following a typically last-minute venue change from the Zanzabar Gallery) in the Xanadu Gallery north of the State Department store for an afternoon of poetry with renowned British poet Ruth O'Callaghan.
The event was an appropriate follow-up to the event that had taken place almost exactly a year before at the Khan Bank theater with American poet David Lehman, which several of the same people (U.S. Ambassador Mark Minton; literary translator Simon Whickham-Smith; Mugi Oyoo and Gombajav Mend-Oyoo of the Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry) had attended. The Academy of Culture and Poetry was largely responsible for Ms O'Callaghan's presence, and the Mongolian Writers Union also helped though its director, my old boss Khaidav Chilaajav, is currently in Seoul on a writer's residency.
The wine was warm, the dixie cups leaked, and the Gallery was hosting us on such short notice that someone forgot to turn off the music and the blenders at the bar, but it's a testament to Ms O'Callaghan's compassionate and lyrical reading that all that ceased to matter by the end. Ms O'Callaghan wasn't a poet I knew about before I turned up at the event, but both her poems themselves, with a great attention to detail and internal rhyme, and her comments about them, with such comforting and universal acknowledgement of the experience of the process of loss, had me feeling like I wanted to know much more about her and her work. It was a Mongolian event, after all, so it turned into a series of readings bogarted by poets lesser- and well-known, the males of which gesticulated and enunciated to the point of spraying spittle with their enthusiasm for speaking their poetic truths. It was a Tuesday, it was 3pm, and it was a great deal of fun.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
227
On the evening of July 2nd, over a hundred people from UB's expat and local communities, both short-term and long-term residents, Ambassadors, LGBT activists, civil society and NGO workers, full-time artists and Ivanhoe Mines executives all wandered in back of the building charred by the fiery protests following Parliamentary elections exactly a year before and through arches into the National Modern Art Gallery northeast of Sukhbaatar Square. Inside, Mongolia's most famous singers alternated with modern dancers and a video monitor while those in attendance caught up with one another over wine, beer, and mini-hamburgers.
At the heart of such a gathering? Brandt Miller, Fulbright fellow and artist extraordinaire, who had after several months here become such a cross-genre man-about-town with such a good idea that he'd raised--from Khan Bank and private donors--enough money to mount a photography exhibition. The exhibition, called "Beyond the Blue Sky", opened last week at Mongolia's foremost modern art gallery, an expression of sophistication and elegance that at the same time addressed an incredibly salient issue for modern Mongolia: LGBT citizens and their struggles. The work was mainly portraits of Mongolians, single, couples, and groups of friends, who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and/or Queer. Cultural sensitivity and symbolism was demonstrated through the use of khadags covering the heads of the subjects; khadags cover the heads of the dead according to Mongolian custom, and they covered the heads of the subjects to convey the way LGBT citizens feel they aren't fully living--while in practical terms concealing their identities, since the reason LGBT Mongolians must continue to "half-live" is the terrible violence that has and still does occur when they choose to come out. Indeed, one of the most stirring aspects of the exhibit was the timeline that accompanied the photos listing incidents of violence befalling Mongolians who chose to come out to their friends, family, or workplace.
Mongolia is not a safe place to be an LGBT-identified person; while politically and creatively it is a place of unprecedented freedom and maturity, attitudes towards same-sex love are still rife with hatred that becomes violent all too often. Even a quick look at a Lonely Planet will tell you that it's not even safe for there to be an established gay club in Mongolia; there are rather underground networks of LGBT-identified and -friendly individuals who gather at a different place every so often so as to avoid the ostracism and outright lethal violence that would befall them should they gather more publicly. For this reason many of Mongolia's more educated LGBT citizens who have the means to get out do, being granted asylum in countries like the USA and Australia.
There is no way to exaggerate the seriousness of the violence that befalls LGBT citizens of Mongolia: rape, murder, beatings, firings; constant harassment by colleagues, and superiors; disownership by family...Brandt Miller and his bravery could not be more important to the changing landscape of modern Mongolia as its urbanizing population enables an increase both in gay community formation and the abuse and violence that occurs when LGBT individuals and gatherings are found out. (The security downstairs at the Gallery that evening was not an accident.) I spoke with one LGBT individual there who tearfully told me they'd never seen an outpouring of public support for LGBT like this one.
The simple fact is that while this conversation had begun, it was waiting to be taken to the next level, and Brandt Miller and his team were the people for the job. It takes artwork and events like these to up the volume on salient topics. Social change is a noisy process, though happily, sometimes the noise is that of joy, like that which filled the Gallery that evening as Altan Urag lent its well-loved sounds to the fight for social equality in one of Asia's otherwise most forward-looking countries.
At the heart of such a gathering? Brandt Miller, Fulbright fellow and artist extraordinaire, who had after several months here become such a cross-genre man-about-town with such a good idea that he'd raised--from Khan Bank and private donors--enough money to mount a photography exhibition. The exhibition, called "Beyond the Blue Sky", opened last week at Mongolia's foremost modern art gallery, an expression of sophistication and elegance that at the same time addressed an incredibly salient issue for modern Mongolia: LGBT citizens and their struggles. The work was mainly portraits of Mongolians, single, couples, and groups of friends, who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and/or Queer. Cultural sensitivity and symbolism was demonstrated through the use of khadags covering the heads of the subjects; khadags cover the heads of the dead according to Mongolian custom, and they covered the heads of the subjects to convey the way LGBT citizens feel they aren't fully living--while in practical terms concealing their identities, since the reason LGBT Mongolians must continue to "half-live" is the terrible violence that has and still does occur when they choose to come out. Indeed, one of the most stirring aspects of the exhibit was the timeline that accompanied the photos listing incidents of violence befalling Mongolians who chose to come out to their friends, family, or workplace.
Mongolia is not a safe place to be an LGBT-identified person; while politically and creatively it is a place of unprecedented freedom and maturity, attitudes towards same-sex love are still rife with hatred that becomes violent all too often. Even a quick look at a Lonely Planet will tell you that it's not even safe for there to be an established gay club in Mongolia; there are rather underground networks of LGBT-identified and -friendly individuals who gather at a different place every so often so as to avoid the ostracism and outright lethal violence that would befall them should they gather more publicly. For this reason many of Mongolia's more educated LGBT citizens who have the means to get out do, being granted asylum in countries like the USA and Australia.
There is no way to exaggerate the seriousness of the violence that befalls LGBT citizens of Mongolia: rape, murder, beatings, firings; constant harassment by colleagues, and superiors; disownership by family...Brandt Miller and his bravery could not be more important to the changing landscape of modern Mongolia as its urbanizing population enables an increase both in gay community formation and the abuse and violence that occurs when LGBT individuals and gatherings are found out. (The security downstairs at the Gallery that evening was not an accident.) I spoke with one LGBT individual there who tearfully told me they'd never seen an outpouring of public support for LGBT like this one.
The simple fact is that while this conversation had begun, it was waiting to be taken to the next level, and Brandt Miller and his team were the people for the job. It takes artwork and events like these to up the volume on salient topics. Social change is a noisy process, though happily, sometimes the noise is that of joy, like that which filled the Gallery that evening as Altan Urag lent its well-loved sounds to the fight for social equality in one of Asia's otherwise most forward-looking countries.
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