Zayasaikhan Sambuu: “I used to visit my uncle regularly when I was a kid. They used to live not far from my home, at the foothills of a long mountain range “Ulaan Uul” (Red Mountain). One day I asked my uncle:
What is beyond this mountain range?
Nothing. That is the end of the world.
So, what comes beyond the world’s end?
There is the ocean…
I was six or seven years old at the time. Being a child, I secretly dreamt of seeing this ocean. Then without telling anyone, I walked to the Red Mountain alone. I climbed to the top of the mountain, starved and thirsty, after a whole day of walking 15-20 kilometers. When I got there … I was stunned. Imagine what I saw? There was a much wider, vast valley than I had just walked through, a much bigger mountain in the distance…”
After discovering what was beyond the Red Mountain, the little boy started dreaming about going to the faraway mysterious world.
Zayasaikhan Sambuu, Zaya, was born in 1975 in a small town called Baatsagaan in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. During his teenage years, the censorship of communism started to fade away, enabling reemergence of forgotten nomadic culture and heritage as well as freedom of religion.
And growing nationalism and religious freedom allowed many people to practice Buddhism; and as a teenager who was skilled in drawing, Zaya was greatly encouraged to depict portraits of Buddhist Gods by people who were eager to recover their religious customs and values. Such things had been forbidden by the communist regime for more than four decades.
For this reason, Zaya was first introduced to art through Buddhism. Indeed, Buddhism had especially influenced him and at the age of 15 he decided to become a monk. However, after studying Tibetan religious texts for two years, he realized that he had a greater interest in art itself rather than religion. In addition, the lifestyle of the monks and the strict rules of religion clashed with his artistic personality and creativity.
View Zayasaikhan Sambuu Paintings
For this reason, Zaya was first introduced to art through Buddhism. Indeed, Buddhism had especially influenced him and at the age of 15 he decided to become a monk. However, after studying Tibetan religious texts for two years, he realized that he had a greater interest in art itself rather than religion. In addition, the lifestyle of the monks and the strict rules of religion clashed with his artistic personality and creativity.