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Mongolia

In April of 2009, Luis landed in Ullanbaator, the capital of Mongolia. The contrast between the country’s cultural and historic wealth and the human tragedy,
embodied by the “rat children”, who survive at night-time temperatures of fifty degrees below zero, by clinging to the hot water pipes under the drains,
impacted the artist strongly. He found a ten-year old boy with a babe in arms begging among blocks of concrete.
Deeply moved, he gave the child some coins and as he did so he saw a bundle moving at his feet.

“When I lifted up the cloth I discovered a three year old child looking up at me, frightened.
That image has stayed with me and there are days and nights when I cannot push it away”.

Luis Uribetxebarría

The adoration of nature in shamanism and the fusion with Buddhism are brutally inconsistent with the cruelty of the reality that Luis saw around him in the streets of the capital. The drama of that polarity is captured in the pieces made by the Basque artist from that period, with colours of red, black and white evoking the forces of life, death and blood. The works made in the three years after his trip honour essential Mongol elements such as hair from the. Przewalski wild horse, the gold inundating the country’s southern plains, and the intense red the Mongols use in their wood and textile art works. The pieces from that time are charged with a dramatic beauty.