Eriko Tsogo – “Wrong Women Myths from Sky”

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All Photograpy by Amanda Tipton

Artist Statement

I am the last of the fast vanishing nomadic Mongol ethnicity.

I am a Mongolian American cross-disciplinary artist merging visual art and film, born on the vast steppes of Mongolia. I grew up in societies of parallel cultural and political/societal dysfunction having been raised in Hungary and immigrating to the United States with my family at the age of 8.

My identity as a first generation Mongolian American migrant allows a life of duality where opposing values and norms of Eastern and Western spiritual and social traditions constantly clash and fuse – creating a marginal periphery of absent power origin. My ever-revolving dual identity as a first generation Mongolian American nomadic voyeur profoundly shapes my artistic process. I am interested in expressing the embattled emotional middle space of the marginal human devoid of identity. I seek to explore the conflicting psycho-spiritual, cultural and disjointed effects of globalization on marginalized identities with attention to woman’s issues; one who perpetually lives both in war and peace within two worlds, in both of which more or less a stranger.

My work is about history and tradition, identity censorship, mythology, folklore, dreams, spirituality, death, and nature set in contemplative scenarios that transform into symbolic allegories for socio-political issues. Within these (psychological mind) spaces, where the fragments of memory, dreams, and the residues of formative experience intermingle with contemporary mythology – I present a space for the renegotiation of identity and the realignment of desire. By revealing the strange and curious inner-workings of the human condition, I aim to examine the fluctuating operations of human identity, desire, horror, wonder and fantasy.

My artistic process derives from a balance of intuitive and concept driven method of experimental creation. In my drawings, I seek to create visual tension through automatic and intended mark making. I like to fuse binary concepts and techniques of representation, from contrasting languages of wet and dry textures, precision and chaos, into stimulatory layers as to create conceptual proximity between forces of opposition and displacement.

I experience my artistic production as an act of creative play between subject and object, and aim for a convulsive spontaneity in the journey of their creation. Similarly, I express my ideas and concepts through cross-disciplinary mediums of painting, writing, installation, multimedia and filmmaking.

My art acts as a transparent extension to my life and my perpetual search to identify and empower through the power of empathy and inspiration.

Artist Bio

Eriko Tsogo is a Mongolian American visual artist and filmmaker born on the steppes of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Eriko grew up in Budapest, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 8. She is an alumni of Denver School of the Arts, having attained her B.F.A (2012) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University. She currently lives and works between the paradigm spheres of Colorado, California and mindscape Mongolia.

Eriko is represented by Leon Gallery in Denver. She has had numerous art shows throughout the United States. In her alter life; she divides her time between her art practice and working as an inter-cultural arts administration professional at the Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado. She is also a published author, and the founder/designer of “HiliteDreamer” contemporary unisex apparel collection. She is currently in process of completing her first international documentary animation film project, due to release in 2019.

Eriko’s art explores the conflicting psycho-spiritual, cultural and gender specific embattled emotional middle space of the marginalized identity; one who perpetually lives both in war and peace within two worlds, in both of which more or less a stranger. Her work is influenced by her dual identity as a first generation Mongolian American where opposing values and norms of Eastern and Western spiritual and social traditions constantly clash and fuse – creating a marginal periphery of absent power origin.

She utilizes mediums of drawing, painting, writing, performance, and multimedia as confessional means to shed light on her experiences of insight recollected from living on the margins. She likes to fuse binary concepts and techniques of representation; from contrasting languages of wet and dry textures, precision and chaos into stimulatory juxtaposing layers as to create conceptual proximity between forces of opposition and displacement.