Airag

A meditation on tradition and capitalism at the edge of the world.

Mongolia (Khanbogd, Ulaanbaatar, Northern Steppe) Three murals painted during Neve's time in Mongolia.

The work depicts two sellers of airag — the ancient fermented mare's milk that has been at the heart of Mongolian nomadic culture for millennia. Traditionally prepared and stored in horse bladders, airag today is sold in plastic bottles and repurposed Coca-Cola containers: the vessel of global capitalism holding one of the oldest drinks on earth. That contrast — between the timeless and the disposable, the sacred and the commercial, the ancient and the imperial — is at the centre of the work. Painted in the dust of the Gobi, with the desert horizon at its back, "Airag" is a quiet monument to something that survives.