 Biung Ismahasan
‘Indigeneity’ is a politically enabling construct in the resistance to ongoing colonialisms and expropriations, and performance and installation art are vital expressions of its emergent, processual and contextual nature. This paper examines the decoloinal capacities of contemporary art and articulates performative epistemologies of relational transformation in spatial through the works of Rukai artist Eleng Luluan and curatorial practices with myself, a Bunun curator (Rukai and Bunun are two Nations of Taiwan’s sixteen Indigenous Groups). Eleng Luluan is a traditional Rukai Indigenous visual artist from Kucapungane community, Pingtung, Taiwan. She specialises in sculpture and composite media and environmental installations. The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) requires our assistance in overseeing the installation of Luluan’s artwork entitled “Between Dreams” in advance of the grand opening of the exhibition Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel on November 7, 2019. This paper attempts to refine mixed descriptions of ‘Indigeneity’, based upon collaborative practices and experiences, considering the growing ‘Indigenisation’ of the international art exhibition. In this paper, I will explore performative approaches and collaborative strategies building on themes of continuity, activation, and relatedness in term of exhibitions Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art at Goldsmiths, University of London that defies expectations of primitivism and primordialism, emphasising instead self-made and re-appropriated identities at Dispossessions (2018), Ngahi' Routes: When Depths Become Experiments - Dispossessions (2019) and Àbadakone (2019). I will focus on articulating how Luluan uses her Indigenous minimalist installations to activate intrinsic and extrinsic performativity between object and sculpture. Then, I will look at how I myself structured a performative curating between Indigenous performance and installation within Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art. International Academy |
