The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 52 Projects Dondon Hounwn 3M – MSPING adornment 2018 Single-channel video: 16:9, colour, sound Yuma Taru The spiral of life – the tongue of the cloth (yan pala na hmali) – a mutual dialogue 2021 Ramie suspended from metal threads / 500 x 250cm (diam.); installed dimensions variable / Commissioned for APT10 Courtesy: The artists and Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Development Centre Yuma Taru has been a significant figure in the revival and promotion of Atayal weaving and dyeing techniques since the 1990s, founding festivals and economic and educational programs. With a background as a schoolteacher raised in the Han Chinese system, she reconnected with her Atayal heritage while working as a civil servant at the Taichung Cultural Centre. Shocked at the dwindling understanding and cursory regard for customary cultural practices, she set about retrieving the techniques and designs of Atayal dyeing and weaving through her grandmother and tribal Elders. Taru established a collective of local mothers dedicated to preserving surviving artefacts and knowledge. Commissioned for APT10, The spiral of life – the tongue of the cloth (yan pala na hmali) – a mutual dialogue 2021 is a textile-based installation consisting of strikingly dyed ramie fibre weavings suspended in lyrical forms before the viewer. These dynamic shapes reference the transmission of knowledge in Atayal spoken language. Whether expressed as narrative or ballad, Taru sees this oral communication as a duet, always requiring the engagement of the listener. According to Elders, words must be like cloth — soft, flexible and elastic — so that one’s thoughts can be conveyed without injuring the listener. For the past 20 years, Masiswagger Zingrur has devoted himself to studying and remaking ancient Paiwan ceramic pots. He is critical of the tendency for traditional practices to be dismissed as mere craftsmanship, and therefore secondary to contemporary art. As a student, Zingrur found that he could not engage in innovative art creation without first immersing himself in tribal aesthetics. For the artist, installation is a form through which to present his research and to articulate his perspectives on cultural identity, and the relationship between tradition and modernity. His installation, Dialogue – Token 2021, features objects suggesting shards from an enormous ceramic vessel, arrayed before a pedestal holding a single pot. Before offering the pot as a vehicle of dialogue with other indigenous peoples, the artist has removed a small chip, a gesture derived from Paiwan tradition: when emerging leaders set off in search of new lands, they would remove a chip from a pot as a token of the eventual joy of reuniting with their families. Amis artist Ruby Swana first developed her aesthetic sensibilities as a window dresser. When Swana returned to her home on Taiwan’s rugged east coast, she became a central figure in the multi-ethnic group of creators known as yishi buluo , the ‘consciousness tribe’, centring on Jinzun Beach in Taitung. Leading artistic and activist efforts around sustainable, zero- waste living, she developed sculptures and installations in the group’s trademark material of driftwood, hewing close to its original forms, but adding romantic touches with the addition of glass and illumination. Commissioned for APT10, Dancer of light 2021 is a room-based installation inspired by the Amis legend of Tiyamacan, a woman who glowed so beautifully that she mesmerised the sea god Ferarakas. When she spurned his advances, Ferarakas caused a terrible flood, so Tiyamacan bade farewell to her parents and joined Ferarakas in the sea to prevent any more death. The sparkling glow of the waves symbolises Tiyamacan’s longing for her family. Using everyday materials such as aluminium foil and cellophane, and the play of smartphone torches, Swana creates a reflective environment of wavelike light that dances across the walls to forge a personal connection with this ancient indigenous soul. Central to the work of Amis choreographer Fangas Nayaw is the dilemma of how to adjust to the reality of contemporary social life while preserving tradition in the face of globalisation. Equally at home in theatre and innovative platforms like virtual reality, Nayaw’s museum-based participatory projects engage audiences in intimate discussions around indigenous issues while introducing Amis songs and modes of socialising. His work touches on controversies surrounding over-tourism, the mistreatment of indigenous lands and painful moments from Taiwan’s past, including Japanese occupation and the White Terror period of martial law from 1947–87. In the Taiwanese dissident tradition, he views the performing arts as a medium that can generate social change. With La XXX Punk 2021, a theatrical production restaged as a video installation, Nayaw expresses a deep concern for the loss of indigenous perspectives on land use and natural resources, and its implications for the long-term prospects of life on Earth. He proposes an ‘indigenous punk’ futurism, based on an ethos of shared responsibility, trust and perception, where creation is not predicated on destruction, but instead on strategies of multiplication and superposition. This indigenous futurism, grounded in tribal knowledge, is echoed in the performative work of Truku artist Dondon Hounwn, from the Taroko Gorge in Taiwan’s north-east. An inheritor of tribal ballads, instruments and rituals, Hounwn also works in performance, installation, video and environmental theatre. In addition, he runs Erlu Art Creation Workshop, which hosts artist residencies in Hounwn’s Dowmung community and encourages young practitioners to research Truku cultural heritage. His own work cuts across media, generational and cultural lines, blending ancestral knowledge with avant-garde, cross-gender aesthetics. The '3M – Three Happenings' series 2018 documents his shamanic performances as videos, housed in structures derived from traditional workers’ huts. In Truku language, when M is placed before a verb, it means something is happening in the present. In MLUQIH wound, Hounwn draws on his experience of becoming a male witch through inherited rituals to relate the tensions felt in the change of religion or belief. MSPING adornment refers to the emptiness that tattooing has taken on in the contemporary world in the absence of sacred rituals. MHADA maturity pays tribute to the Taivoan people, one of Taiwan’s ‘non-status tribes’, as they work towards official recognition. The contemporary art of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples is a rich and expanding field, characterised by its diversity, aesthetic innovation grounded in the retrieval of effaced culture, and a manifest desire to engage the problems of the present — including the awesome threats posed by climate change and habitat destruction — from the perspective of indigenous wisdom. Drawing on the history, cosmology and mythos of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, Between Earth and Sky accordingly reflects on possible future relationships between humans, the land and the other species that inhabit it. Within the context of APT, it provides an introduction to the breadth and richness of the field of practice, and proposes further connections with indigenous and non- indigenous art throughout the region. Reuben Keehan Endnotes 1 Etan Pavavalung, quoted in Taipei Today, ‘Paiwan artist carves out new paths for Taiwan's indigenous traditions’, Taiwan News , 4 August 2018, <https:// www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3499270 >, viewed August 2021. 2 Pavavalung. 3 Aluaiy Pulidan, artist statement, supplied to the author May 2021.