
Хар хаалh
Olga Tsedenova
Wooden planks, metal, wood carving. A fragment of the research.
Har Khaalh. Black Road by Olya Tsedenova is an exploration of the forced deportation of the Kalmyks between 1943 and 1957.
The research began with the creation of a genogram—a diagram mapping family history to describe relationships and key events across generations—as a means to address ongoing traumatic experiences.
At once a defining event and a figure of silence, the deportation of the artist’s family took place against the backdrop of the mass forced exile of an entire people, declared enemies of the state by Stalin. This trauma became interwoven with a decades-long process of erasure: in 1924, the Kalmyk script—Todo Bichig (Clear Script), created by a Buddhist monk before the 11th century—was forcibly replaced with Cyrillic. After the deportation, not only the script but also the language itself was fragmented, dispersed, and nearly annihilated.
Amid the investigation of personal and public archives, language—and specifically the disappearing Clear Script (Todo Bichig)—emerged as a method of reconnecting with a lost past. Through the practice of repeating lines and strokes, akin to copying exercises in the lower grades of an imaginary school, the artist grapples with the gaps in memory. These exercises cannot produce a factual account of events or approach the texture of memory directly, but traces emerge through them.
From afar, the work presents 13 wooden planks, forming a fragment of the cattle cars used to deport thousands of people. Upon closer inspection, signs appear: thirteen words—the years of exile—inscribed in Clear Script.








