Abstract
This article describes and analyzes a devotional image currently kept in the library of Gandantegc’inlen Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Created during the late Communist period, the image, entitled “Mother Mongolia” (Mongol ee), is actually an image of Green Tārā in disguise.
The image of Mother Mongolia should be located within the paradigms of both traditional Mongolian visual culture as well as the visual culture of the USSR (of which Mongolia was a satellite state). In this article, I examine the visual strategies of subterfuge employed by the unknown creator of the image of Mother Mongolia in order to be able to display an image of Green Tārā openly, during an era when the display of such images would normally have been forbidden.
At the same time, an analysis of the discourse that formed around this image as part of the interview with the Buddhist monk B. Mo’nhbaatar reveals the cognitive and religious-philosophical strategies that formed an integral part of the reception or “correct viewing” of this image.