Resonance of the Vernacular unfolds in an abandoned classroom of the former Busan Nam High School. Clad in an opaque grey that envelops every surface, fourteen sculptural chairs assembled from wood, metal, faux fur and found materials are lined up as if waiting for students. The surfaces of scorched wood and rusted metal bear the traces of their making, while faux fur covering the chairs mimics something wild without ever becoming so. Its uncanny resemblance to animal hide evokes the nomadic rhythms of Mongolian life and the seasonally shifting relationships between people and the natural world.

One of the chairs was acquired from an outdoor market in Ulaanbaatar, where vendors spend their days seated on elevated stools. A field recording made in that market fills the classroom with the murmur of everyday life. In doing so, the sound draws attention to the resilience of ordinary people who have continually adapted amidst political and economic change.

At the front of the room, horns emerge from the chalkboard and chairs. Within this abandoned school, once a site of learning, Erdenebayar draws parallels with Mongolia’s educational institutions, which continue to bear the remnants of the Soviet era inherited across generations. The classroom becomes a space where ideology, collective memory, labour, and aspiration converge. Here, individual lives are bound together by shared ambitions to persist, endure, and grow alongside one another. Through this, the artist suggests the continuous interweaving of the vernacular and the institutional, where different streams of knowledge and values coexist in tension and ongoing negotiation.