For her fourth solo exhibition at Backslash, Odonchimeg Davaadorj powerfully and delicately explores the idea of union as a driving force for growth, resilience, and life. Through a lyrical journey combining drawings, sculptures, and paintings of all formats, the artist offers a profound refection on the complementarity between human beings, animals, and nature.

Born in Mongolia and based in France, Davaadorj has been developing a singular body of work for over a decade, in which the fragility of living beings dialogues with personal and symbolic narratives. Her works, both delicate and powerful, explore the invisible connections between humans and their environment, while questioning identity, memory, and transformation. Through hybrid fgures and organic motifs, the artist weaves an intimate and dreamlike world, rooted in her origins but open to a universal reflection.

Verticality, a central notion in the exhibition, emerges as a symbol of vital impulse and growth. Like plants reaching for the light, the works depict human and animal fgures rising not alone, but supported by one another, grounded in visible or invisible ties. Each element is a pillar, a fragile yet essential foundation. Without one of them, the structure collapses.

The artist thus highlights social structures, family, community, or the home, as places of peace. Intertwined human silhouettes, body-trees, shared canopies: union here is not fusion, but complementary harmony, fragile and precious.

"To grow is to lean on one another," each work seems to whisper. What we consider solid — a relationship, an ecosystem, a society — exists only through the constant presence of all its elements. Union, then, becomes an act of awareness: seeing the other not as an obstacle or mere neighbour, but as a condition for our own verticality. In a fragmented world, Davaadorj invites us to relearn trust in connections, to celebrate collective strength, and to recognize the beauty of a fragile yet possible balance. It is an ode to what binds us: the outstretched hand, the shared breath, the common root.