Sometimes, the hardest thing to grasp is what's closest to us - our own everyday lives. Mongolian-born artist Zula Tuvshinbat, who now resides in Vienna, blends impressions that touch her in her art, bringing together, for example, weightlifting at the gym with the weight of love. After all, who hasn't experienced it: love can sometimes be quite heavy.
Zula Tuvshinbat opts for light, soft materials - wool threads, fabrics. In addition to her fabric sculptures, she primarily works with the technique of tufting, where threads are woven into a canvas to create a kind of textile painting or tapestry. For her, the artist explains, this is like painting, but with different materials.
The fact that the protagonists in her paintings are women, and they are often depicted nude or partially nude, is related to the reappropriation or reclaiming of the often male-dominated gaze on the female body and identity. She says she doesn't want to make feminist art, but she also makes it clear that as a woman, you don't have to let anything be taken away from you.
The works of Zula Tuvshinbat, according to art historian Colette Angeli, evoke "the freedom to exist impudently, to wander, to celebrate, to enjoy, to create," and they are exactly in this sense, like her materials, imbued with lightness and at the same time self-determined. (written by Wolfgang Haas)
