Context (CMS Context)
(Bib) Herle, Anita, Mark Elliott and Rebecca Empson. Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Cambridge, 2009. Pg 71.

Event Date 30/3/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Context (CMS Context)
Exhibited in 'Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination' in the Andrews Gallery, MAA March 2009-November 2010.
Exhibition label text:
Household Chest
MAA Installation, 2009
Composed of items collected by Rebecca Empson 2007, Mongolia

Mobile herders in Mongolia may be separated from family members throughout the year, but people remain attached to a particular house, even after death. Household chests are a political medium for displaying and maintaining different relations attached to a single household.

Ancestral portraits, photographic montages and pieces contained inside the chest extend the agency of people and assemble family and friends, so that people are not just where their bodies are but in many different places simultaneously.

The household chest is also a site where different concepts of the body meet. The body in Mongolia is not simply composed of parts or substances. It also contains forces such as luck, might, fortune, and spirit/soul that fluctuate in and out of balance according to a person’s actions.

Many of the objects regulate and manage these forces, such as the fortune bag, religious icons, butter lamps and prayer wheels. The calendar tells of fortuitous days, according to astrology.

Female household members feed the display with daily offerings of milk libations and attend to and change its form. In so doing they tend to the people attached to a house.

Permission to reproduce the photographic montages and ancestral portraits displayed here have been sought from a household in Mongolia.

Event Date 30/3/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Context (CMS Context)
Collected by Rebecca Empson for MAA from Narantuul Market, Ulaanbaatar, on the 22nd of August 2007. The copies of photos in the frame are not to be accessioned but should be kept in the frame. If this object is to be displayed in the future please notify the collector, Rebecca Empson, who should be able to contact the (descendants) of the people in the photographs to ask for permission.
Event Date 30/3/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Description (CMS Description)
Wooden glass fronted montage frame, stained orange. The corners and edges of the frame are decorated with wooden curvilinear designs, the background of which have been stained dark brown. Reverse of frame has a large stain on it. The interior of the frame contains a photo montage.
Event Date 30/3/2016
Author: Remke Velden