The Turin-based artist, known for his beeswax and clay sculptures, will research 1930s Mongolia in London’s archives during a Gasworks residency supported by Fondazione Memmo Fondazione Memmo, the Rome contemporary art foundation, and Gasworks, the London art organization, have announced that Bekhbaatar Enkhtur will undertake a residency at Gasworks in the first part of 2026. It is part of a fellowship for artists living in Italy, which is supported by the Fondazione Memmo. Enkhtur was born in 1994 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and now lives and works in Turin. Sculpture Between Presence and AbsenceHis work draws on Mongolia’s mythological and cultural heritage. He works in beeswax, clay, aluminum and copper, moving between sculpture, drawing and engraving, to explore memory, impermanence and the relationship between material presence and absence. His choice of soft, easily changed materials such as wax and clay is central to his approach: Frieze has described fragility and transience as key themes in his practice, questioning the nature of sculpture itself. He has built a strong reputation in Italy. He won the illy Present Future Prize at Artissima in 2023, which led to a solo show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, and was among the finalists for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2024. He is represented by the Matèria gallery in Rome and by Pedro Cera. His first solo show in Rome, Imagining for Real, was held at Matèria in 2023. This autumn Matèria also presented his beeswax lotus sculptures and drawings on sandpaper at Frieze Seoul, according to Frieze. The Research ProjectDuring the residency, Enkhtur will research archives in London, studying photographs and materials about Mongolia in the 1930s. He will focus on images of monasteries and religious sites, many of which were destroyed during the Stalinist repressions and communist purges. The project asks how the traces of these spiritual places were altered or lost over time. Starting from the fragments, surfaces, silhouettes and ritual associations that remain, he will develop new sculptural and spatial experiments. The aim, according to the announcement, is to explore how images and objects can continue to preserve meaning even when their original contexts have been destroyed or displaced. Why It MattersThe project links a chapter of Mongolian history, the religious persecution of the 1930s that is little known outside the country, to an artist working in Italy and to an archive in London. It also shows the range of the Fondazione Memmo, which is currently best known in Rome for exhibitions at its Via Fontanella Borghese space, such as Portia Zvavahera’s Like Flowers We Fade, which closes on November 1. Image: Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Coccodrilli, 2025, beeswax, steel, golf ball. Courtesy the artist and Matèria, Roma. Photo: Carlo Favero.

The Turin-based artist, known for his beeswax and clay sculptures, will research 1930s Mongolia in London’s archives during a Gasworks residency supported by Fondazione Memmo Fondazione Memmo, the Rome contemporary art foundation, and Gasworks, the London art organization, have announced that Bekhbaatar Enkhtur will undertake a residency at Gasworks in the first part of 2026. It is part of a fellowship for artists living in Italy, which is supported by the Fondazione Memmo. Enkhtur was born in 1994 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and now lives and works in Turin. His work draws on Mongolia’s mythological and cultural heritage. He works in beeswax, clay, aluminum and copper, moving between sculpture, drawing and engraving, to explore memory, impermanence and the relationship between material presence and absence. His choice of soft, easily changed materials such as wax and clay is central to his approach: Frieze has described fragility and transience as key themes in his practice, questioning the nature of sculpture itself. He has built a strong reputation in Italy. He won the illy Present Future Prize at Artissima in 2023, which led to a solo show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, and was among the finalists for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2024. He is represented by the Matèria gallery in Rome and by Pedro Cera. His first solo show in Rome, Imagining for Real, was held at Matèria in 2023. This autumn Matèria also presented his beeswax lotus sculptures and drawings on sandpaper at Frieze Seoul, according to Frieze. During the residency, Enkhtur will research archives in London, studying photographs and materials about Mongolia in the 1930s. He will focus on images of monasteries and religious sites, many of which were destroyed during the Stalinist repressions and communist purges. The project asks how the traces of these spiritual places were altered or lost over time. Starting from the fragments, surfaces, silhouettes and ritual associations that remain, he will develop new sculptural and spatial experiments. The aim, according to the announcement, is to explore how images and objects can continue to preserve meaning even when their original contexts have been destroyed or displaced. The project links a chapter of Mongolian history, the religious persecution of the 1930s that is little known outside the country, to an artist working in Italy and to an archive in London. It also shows the range of the Fondazione Memmo, which is currently best known in Rome for exhibitions at its Via Fontanella Borghese space, such as Portia Zvavahera’s Like Flowers We Fade, which closes on November 1. Image: Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Coccodrilli, 2025, beeswax, steel, golf ball. Courtesy the artist and Matèria, Roma. Photo: Carlo Favero.