Featured Scholar: Uranchimeg Tsultem, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair in International Studies
Herron School of Art + Design
Global Nomadic Art Project: East Asian Ecologies of Environmental Art
Dr. Uranchimeg Tsultem is a scholar of Mongolian art and culture whose research focuses mainly on Buddhist art and architecture and contemporary Asian art. Dr. Tsultem’s research and publications include topics on ancient stone monuments in Mongolian steppes, a thirteenth-century Chinggis Khan’s portrait at National Palace Museum in Taiwan, a nineteenth-century mobile monastery Urga (Ikh Khüree), art of 1960s in Mongolia and contemporary Asian artists’ relationship to their art traditions.
The discourse of the Anthropocene is central to the discussion of climate change and environmental issues, which are, according to art historian T. J. Demos, “first and foremost a political crisis (italics are original)” that is continued based on the colonialist attitudes of “destructive and utilitarian, idealized and exoticized…structuring of nature” (Demos 2016). Calling for “decolonizing nature,” he further critiques neoliberal governments and the global capital circulation markets they maintain for corporations as corrupted systems which effectively encourage depletion of natural resources and ecological destruction for the sake of economic wealth.
Dr. Tsultem's approach to the Anthropocene is not limited to the analysis of political failures of neoliberalism. Viewing the Anthropocene as “lived experience,” as historian Jason Kelly recently discussed (Kelly 2018), her research asks how we can further people’s thinking about nature as an inseparable part of our daily lives and repair – in practice and in academic discourse– the nature-culture divide. Her research introduces environmental projects conducted in East Asia as part of environmental consciousness and (re)connection with nature. During the 2023 TRIP Awards and Fall Showcase, she introduced a Mongolian artist Amarsaikhan (aka Amara) and his artwork in 2019-2023 within an international outreach of a South-Korean environmental Global Nomadic Art Project (GNAP), which aims to address the climate change from alternative perspectives of subjectivity and personal reflections on nature around the world. She analyzes these approaches to the Anthropocene with the innovative work on climate crisis by Stefan Petranek at Herron.
Dr. Tsultem's translation of research into a better understanding of how climate change and other environmental issues are directly tied to human impact is another excellent example of how IU Indianapolis's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.
Selected Publications in IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks
With over several scholarly articles contributed to IU Indianapolis's free, open access repository, Dr. Tsultem has made research knowledge about practical solutions for affordable and reliable energy from renewable sources available to researchers, students, and readers around the world.
Tsultem, U. (2019). Introduction to “Buddhist Art of Mongolia: Cross-Cultural Connections, Discoveries, and Interpretations” | Cross-Currents. Buddhist Art of Mongolia: Cross-Cultural Connections, Discoveries and Interpretations, (31), 1–6. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21289
Tsultem, U. (2019). Buddhist Archeology in Mongolia: Zanabazar and the Géluk Diaspora beyond Tibet | Cross-Currents. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, (31), 7–32. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21286
Tsultem, U. "Political Ecology in Baatarzorig’s Art: Mongolia Is in Busines." Chapter in Rebecca Empson and Hermione Spriggs eds., Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi) Art, Anthropology and Mongol Futurism (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018), pp. 105-119. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/24878
Tsultem, U. (2017). Buddhist Revelations in Davaakhuugin Soyolmaa’s Contemporary Mongolian Art. Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 199–211. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21287
Tsultem, U. (2016). Cartographic Anxieties in Mongolia: The Bogd Khan’s Picture-Map. Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 6, 66–87. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21288
Tsultem, U. (2015). Zanabazar (1635–1723): Vajrayāna Art and the State in Medieval Mongolia. In Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society (pp. 116–136). https://hdl.handle.net/1805/21290
Find more free articles by Uranchimeg Tsultem in IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks.