At the initiative of  the City Mayor, the Arts and Culture Department of the City Implementing Agency and the Mongolian Arts Council will jointly organize the “Ulaanbaatar Biennial” from June 6 to 20, 2025. The general program developer of the “Ulaanbaatar Biennial” will be the Mongolian Arts Council NGO, and the Arts and Culture Department of the City Implementing Agency, the “Khokh Nar” Mongolian Contemporary Art Center, and Marketainment Mongolia will work together as co-organizers.

Ulaanbaatar will join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2023, joining more than 355 cities from more than 90 countries around the world, which is a great impetus for promoting Mongolian culture and arts worldwide and improving the sector’s position. The 7 categories of UNESCO Creative Cities Network activities include Crafts & Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts, and Music.

The Ulaanbaatar Biennial will feature a variety of activities, including international general and joint exhibitions, outdoor and art education programs, curator and artist training, meetings, and film screenings.
The curator of the Biennial’s general exhibition, Australian curator Tian Zhang, will be invited to organize an international and joint exhibition under the theme “Under the Moon, on the Horizon”.

Artists are invited to create their works under the theme “Under the Moon, on the Horizon” and participate in the biennial’s general exhibition. The selected artist’s work will be exhibited in the main exhibition of the Ulaanbaatar Biennial.

Theme: On the horizon, under the moon
The first edition of Ulaanbaatar Biennale looks beyond the horizon, inviting local and international artists to contemplate place, land and home. The title is borrowed from a poem by Mongolian poet, an ode to his mother and his homelands in the Gobi. Inspired by this line and the vast landscape of Mongolia, On the horizon, under the moon looks to the meeting point of the sky and the earth, the blue border of dreams. The title evokes the coalescence of many perspectives for this Biennale: while we may see different horizons, we share the same moon.
On the horizon, under the moon explores the poetics and politics of land and homelands. The exhibition makes space for ancestral and intimate connections to place; platforms land rights struggles and indigenous movements; and speaks to cultural displacement and diasporic loss. It also makes visible the forces that act upon the land – destructive, generative and regenerative. In a world impacted by colonialism and capitalism, we ask: What does resistance look like? What can be recovered on the precipice of loss? What can be restored or renewed? What can we see at the edge of the sky, lit by the glow of the moon — and how might we get there?

Art genre:
All forms of visual and contemporary art are welcome.
– Installation -Art
– Sculpture
– Painting
– Visual Arts
– Decorative Arts
– Crafts
– Media Arts
– Video
– Photography
– Digital Arts
– Performance Arts and more

Introduction to the work:
Artists are requested to submit their CV and a presentation of their work by April 14, 2025 at https://forms.gle/nsUGaBqahfsAvkcC7.

Selection:
The works to be included in the exhibition will be selected by a selection committee consisting of the general curator and the organizing team.
More information is available at www.ulaanbaatarbiennale.mn, the Ulaanbaatar Biennale website www.artscouncil.mn, and the Ulaanbaatar Biennale social media page www.instagram.com/ulaanbaatarbiennale/.
Contact: Arts Council of Mongolia,
Email: development@artscouncil.mn
Tel: 319015, 319017

Initiator:
Capital City Governor’s Office

General Organizer:
Arts and Culture Department of the City Implementing Agency
Arts Council of Mongolia

Co-Organizer:
Culture and Arts Authority, implementing Agency of Government of Mongolia
Blue Sun Contemporary Art Center
Marketainment Mongolia LLC