“Манай means “our” in Mongolian. It is also the name of my mother’s home bakery, Manna in English. Having rented our current apartment for over a decade, calling that space “ours” is still a temporary and sensitive label. It is where the long term dream to open her storefront bakery intersects ironically in repeated cycles and acts as the origin itself. In the tiny kitchen of appliances we cannot replace or walls we cannot paint, the appeal of owning something dwindles at seeing the temporality of the physical at the face of what we can become for others. This imprint of our future bakery is created with steel rods, welded, of 2 different gauges. “

With the support of a $1,200 FRFF grant, I embarked on a series of experimental projects that placed myself in the role of a baker, based on the experiences of my mother. This exploration allowed me to engage with the concept of ownership and its relationship to identity through the lenses of an American upbringing and Mongolian traditions of nomadism. I adapted the following projects from 3 performance pieces conducted in my previous portfolio. These performances involved the Mongolian Ger and my embodiment of a glorified Mongolian persona with conflicted attempts to interact with these elements (the moving home/yurt/ger) After receiving the FRFF Full Grant, I developed a pop-up bakery concept in collaboration with my Senior Thesis advisor, Elizabeth Chodos. Together, we explored various directions for the project and ultimately decided to present it as a performance during the College of Fine Arts Open Studio event. Over the two months leading up to the event, I fully immersed myself in the role—designing menus, developing recipes, drafting blueprints, and adopting the mindset of a baker. The grant support enabled me to plan financially, allowing for the purchase of necessary materials and supplies.

On the night of the Open Studio, I transformed the media room into a free pop-up café. With the help of several close friends, we served orders through the evening and I navigated the chaos and intensity of the performance with just a few hours of sleep. Amidst my careful planning, the experience brought both fulfillment and unexpected challenges, revealing the reality of labor’s demands on myself and those around me. Confronting the gap between my idealized vision of my mother and the real cost of labor, emotion, and occasional failure was a sobering experience. My mother, who never romanticized her work as a baker, had been grounded in this reality, whereas I had been captivated by an idealized sweetness that obscured the bitter truths. Yet among these realizations, the night was a success of bridging cultural traditions with contemporary practices, creating a space where my heritage could inform and transform the culinary experience.

As I transitioned from this role into broader reflections on my artistic practice, I realized that my ongoing investigations over the past four years often returned to the idea of impermanence and bittersweet notions of dreaming. Ownership—whether of material possessions, identity, or even stability—felt fleeting. This recurring theme guided me toward a final large-scale installation. Designed to exist only in a single moment, this installation embodied the transitory nature of the concepts I had been exploring. I chose steel as the primary medium for this work, expanding my skills in metalworking and connecting the material to my earlier research on Mongolia’s growing export economy. The contradictions between the country’s rich natural resources, such as steel and copper, and its widening poverty gap added depth and complexity to the narrative I aimed to convey through the installation. Additionally, the opportunities afforded to me through my education and the support I received pay homage to Pittsburgh’s rich history of steel as both a complex commodity and a cultural resource. Using the remaining grant funds, I continued my exploration by creating a large-scale wireframe installation of 5’x7’x7’. Composed of over 60 pieces of 5-foot, 0.25-inch steel pencil rods, this installation served as a physical blueprint of the bakery my mother and I are planning. The wireframe, like our plans, exists in a realm of words, ideas, and aspirations, embodying the fleeting dreams we hold. After over four months of design and production, each weld and cut became a performative ritual and a labor of love.

This work stands as a pivotal moment in my practice, allowing me to construct a world shaped by years of personal memories, reflections, and connections to those around me. Whether I dismantle it, relocate it, or continue expanding, this world will always endure. I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to work with the Studio for Creative Inquiry. I hold deep respect for the work they support and am honored to be a recipient of the FRFF Full Grant. As a Mongolian-American artist, my time in the College of Fine Arts—through advisors, mentors, peers, alumni, visiting artists, and especially my professors—has surfaced dimensions of my world that have always been present but now have the space to fully resonate.

This project was made possible with support from the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Grant #2024-014. Additional images can be found here.