Let me start with a story. I first visited Argentina in 2018, where I met an Argentine artist named Ignacio Chico, and as we got started talking I felt a deep connection with him. We were around the same age and were both the children of military officers. My father was an officer in China, but he never experienced war and neither did I. We had peaceful times when I was growing up; I knew nothing about violence around the world until later. Ignacio’s father, on the other hand, had fought in the 1982 war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas off the coast of South America. I was struck by our different experiences growing up in peace and war.

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It was a blessing not to know war as a child; but in fact, after the devastation, massacres, and Holocaust of the early twentieth century, the world still has not learned to maintain peace. War, conflict, and genocide seem like they are everywhere, a state of affairs that should lead us to introspection and self-examination. Wars are the result of broken relationships: between nations, between people, but also between us and the earth.

 

My Chinese Mongolian friend Siqinhu has written with profound elegance about the Mongolian word ᠭᠤᠮᠤᠳᠠᠯ (“gomodal”), which is difficult to translate because it is a distinct cultural concept that blends resentment, disappointment, and reproach with sadness and tenderness. It is the “pain of love” that Mongolian culture refined to meet the needs of nomadic life in a harsh environment that demanded careful maintenance of interpersonal relationships on which survival depended. Gomodal exemplifies the sort of philosophical insight that many Indigenous cultures have developed to maintain reciprocity, harmony, and balance. These insights adapt to specific environmental niches and subsistence strategies, but also reflect what have been common experiences of injustice and colonial subjugation.

 

The prevalence of war around the globe should cause us to think more critically about our own relationships. With this in mind, I am inviting artists and creators from Indigenous backgrounds (or inspired by Indigenous thought) to reflect upon how these cultural systems and values can provide insight into different ways of relating more peacefully. This is not a show about war per se; it is a show about relationships, resilience, connectedness, and belonging as antidotes to war. We may not be able to end war itself, but through listening and introspection, we may learn to live in greater harmony and balance. We can become better relatives to one another and our environment.

 

With this call for work, I am envisioning an initial online exhibition under the title Transcending Territories 2025: indigenous Insights and Resilience in Times of War, building upon my series of Transcending Territories exhibitions. From this preliminary exploration, I hope to gather peoples’ thinking through art, poetry, film, and other creative media to develop a physical exhibition to follow. This is an opportunity to rethink our values together through a diversity of expressive practices but a common interest in the contributions of nomadic and Indigenous philosophies.

 

Please consider being a part of this Transcending Territories project, by submitting relevant work and sharing in what I hope will be a growing dialogue of peace and a network of good relations. I would also greatly appreciate your assistance in further circulating this open call to other artists who may be interested. Thank you for your consideration; for more information, please feel free to contact me at TranscendingTerritories2025@gmail.com.

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Coral LuLu

September 18th, 2025

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