Valley of the Ancestors, Khangai Mountains
Mandal Mountain: An Artist-in-Residence Pilgrimage
Western Mongolia | Khangai Mountains
Dates: 14-27 Aug 2025 | By application only
The mountain is more than land — it is ancestor, guardian, and spirit.
In Mongolian and Central Asian nomadic cultures, mountains are revered as sacred beings — alive, powerful, and deeply intertwined with spiritual and ancestral life. Pilgrimages to mountains are acts of reverence, rooted in animist, shamanic, and Buddhist traditions. Many nomadic cultures journey to sacred mountains to listen, to offer, and to remember who they are.
A sacred geometry of land, memory, and meaning — we will journey to Mandal Mountain and the Valley of the Ancestors.
For generations, Mongolia’s nomadic peoples have made pilgrimages to sacred mountains — places where earth meets sky, and offerings are made to ancestral spirits at stone cairns called ovoo. We follow in their footsteps, walking the line between reverence and remembering.
Guided by the ever-watching mountains, you will be invited to explore your own creative and ancestral constellations. Inspired by Christine Chang Hanway’s residency with House of Tengri, where she reflected that “identity is not fixed, but a constellation,” this experience offers time and space to trace the sacred threads that shape who we are and who we are becoming.
Through connection, shared meals, ancestral mapping, and embodied creativity, each day becomes a thread in a collaborative weaving of belonging. Artists-in-residence are invited to create in response to place — be it through visual art, writing, textiles, performance, sound, or silence.
This is more than a journey.
It is an Artist-in-Residence Pilgrimage — a circle of creators, storytellers, and seekers called to listen, to witness, and to respond.
This residency is a living ritual, held in deep relationship with land, people, and tradition.
Come to listen.
Come to remember.
Come to create in the sacred Mandal Mountain.
Limited to 6 artist-residents
By invitation and application | Self-financed
In association with House of Tengri
Valley of the Ancestors, Watercolour. © Christine Chang Hanway
Created as part of the Tengri × Source Mountain Artist in Residence program