Umanun mahalav:
Mapasadus laupak a dau tu takiTaivangtin tu Incumin
tu kaisamasialan tu painunahtungan.
Picture
Dispossessions:
Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art

21 - 25 May 2018
Goldsmiths, University of London,
Lower Atrium Space, Professor Stuart Hall Building,
SE14 6NW

Artists
Dondon · Hounwn東冬．侯溫
(co-performer Temu Basaw 鐵目．巴紹)
Eleng Luluan 峨冷．魯魯安
Eval Malinjinnan 依法兒．瑪琳奇那
Marita Isobel Solberg (Sápmi, Norway)
Hsu-Hung Huang 黃旭宏
Yu-Hsien Hsueh 薛喻鮮
Biung Ismahasan 彼勇．依斯瑪哈單
 
Performing Troupe
Ayi-yanga Taiwanese Ethnomusicology Ensemble 艾秧樂集
 
Together with music, dance and interdisciplinary panels,
this exhibition brings together cutting-edge, Indigenous modes of expression including painting,
​live performance, photography, video and immersive installation.

Indigenous artists and performers have travelled from Taiwan,
with generous grants from the Taiwanese government.
  
Curated by Biung Ismahasan
Goldsmiths, University of London
 
Lower Atrium Space of Professor Stuart Hall Building 
Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurships (ICCE)
London, SE14 6NW
 
May 21 – 25, 2018
Mon 21 May - Opening Reception with performances by performance artist Don Don Hounwn, Ayi-yanga Taiwanese Ethnomusicology Ensemble (艾秧樂集) and dancer Yu-Hsien Hsueh. Speeches by Muni Pasasauv and curator Biung Ismahasan. 6 – 9pm.
Tue 22 May - Closed Session: Curator/Artist Conversation and Documentation by Taiwanese Indigenous TV team and Filmmaker Yukan Malai. By Invitation. 11am – 3pm.
Tue 22 May - Echoes with My Spirit: Taiwanese Indigenous Musical Performance by Ayi-yanga. In Conversation with curator Biung Ismahasan. 6 – 9pm.  
Wed 23 May - Kitchen Table Talk: Scholars, Artists and Curator. Discussion on Indigeneity in contemporary art and cultural and diplomatic implications of Indigenous exhibitions. 6pm – 9pm moderated by curator Biung Ismahasan. Invited scholars include Dr Carla Figueira (Goldsmiths), Dr Carlos Gigoux Gramegna (University of Essex), Mei-Chen Tseng (Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan), Pea-Chen Tseng (Taipei Indigenous Contemporary Art Gallery, Taiwan), Eval Malinjinnan (Interdisciplinary painter, Bunun Nation of Indigenous Taiwanese based in Sydney, Australia)
Thu 24 May - Performative Encounters between Northern Sámi (Norway) & Indigenous Taiwanese Truku. Performance art exchange between Marita Isobel Solberg and Don Don Hounwn, followed by discussion with audience. 6 – 9pm.
Fri 25 May - Exhibition Closing with performances by Indigenous musical troupe, Ayi-yanga, and dancer Yu-Hsien Hsueh, speeches by Dr Carla Figueira and curator Biung Ismahasan. 6 – 8pm.
​Exhibition Programme Details 

​Click here for events, talks, performances and workshop
Click here for Goldsmiths, University of London event 

Evnetbrite Links

Exhibition Opening with Performances​ 6-9pm 21 May here
Echoes with My Spirit Performance 6-9pm 22 May here
Kitchen Table Talk: Scholars, Artists and Curator 6-9pm 23 May here
Performative Encounters between Northern Sámi (Norway) & Indigenous Taiwanese Truku 
6-9pm 24 May here
Exhibition Closing with Performances 6-8pm 25 May here

Facebook Events

Exhibition Opening with performances 6-9pm 21 May 2018 here 
Echoes with My Spirit Performance 6-9pm 22 May 2018 here
Kitchen Table Talk: Scholars, Artists and Curator 6-9pm 23 May 2018 here
Performative Encounters between Northern Sámi (Norway) & Indigenous Taiwanese Truku
6-9pm 24 May 2018 here
Exhibition Closing with performances 6-8pm 25 May here
​
Curator's Public Presentations in Europe

The Pacific Arts Association Europe-Meeting at Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Germany on 28 April here
Taiwan Indigenous Studies at SOAS University of London on 2 May 2018 here
London Taiwanese Student Association at SOAS (倫敦講臺) on 5 May 2018 here 
IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art) Congress in Gdansk/Tricity (Poland) and Vilnius (Lithuania) between 10-15 May 2018 here


CURATOR'S STATEMENT
 
‘Indigeneity’ is a politically enabling construct in the resistance to ongoing colonialisms and expropriations. Performance and installation art are conceived as vital expressions of the emergent, processual and contextual nature of Indigenous cultures. As such, performative installation may be considered as an experimental form of resistance.
 
Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art defies expectations of primitivism and primordialism, by emphasising instead self-made and re-appropriated identities. Offering an example of Indigenous curation from an Austronesian perspective, the exhibition activates the radical flourishing of Indigenous performance and installation art, despite – and in response to – social and environmental disruption, instability and change.
 
Sensing and engaged with the decolonial concept of ‘Performative Indigeneity’, Dispossessions considers the continuing struggles of Indigenous peoples to resist erasure, by engaging with the artistic entanglements of curatorial collaboration and collaborative curating. The exhibition emphasises on discussing the challenges for decolonial aesthetics and Indigenous curatorial practice to account for diverse modes of subjugation and subjectivity and offering Indigenous views on topics that include distinct colonial wounds, land trauma, the meaning and practices of sovereignty across Indigeneity. By gathering Indigenous artists, the various generations and I collectively confronted coloniality, including coloniality of knowledge, coloniality of being and coloniality of religion trapping spirituality (theological-Christian and Indigenous secular-liberal). I maintain an Indigenous-centrism as a counterpoint to emphasise the production of knowledge about curatorial decoloniality. As Anishinaabe curator Wanda Nanibush asserts “words like return, resurgence and rewriting all have embedded in them a colonial idea of time where we have not had continuity and contemporaneity or even modernity, even if otherwise than its European versions.”[1] Dispossessions connects any process of decolonisation of Indigenous curatorial practice to question what the place of aesthetics in the colonial matrix of power, a machine that generates injustices, disavowals, silences at all levels, by articulating performative utterance and visualising sovereignty of Indigenous lands, bodies, cultures and communities.
 
Central to Dispossessions is the cereal crop millet and its fermentation into traditional millet wine which can be considered a symbolic ritual object of Indigenous Taiwanese cultures, heralding reclamation and unity. Enacted in the wake of colonialism, the sharing of millet wine, and its experimental embodiment in Indigenous performance art, resurrects pre-colonial rituals by allowing for celebration and connection. Alcohol unities us that allows one person to enrich the life of another at diverse moments of celebration. Alcoholism has the power to divide through addiction, violence, illness, taboo and death. Millet wine seems to have arisen from the end of colonialism, tapping into pre-colonial rituals that can be transformed as an experimental embodiment of Indigenous performance art. As Métis artist and activist Dylan Miner claims that Native individuals and communities maintain their respective sense of who they are and what their history should be via embodied practices and artistic expressions.
 
Cutting edge and contemporary, essentially Indigenous in its decolonial modes of expression, Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art is the first research-based exhibition of Taiwanese Indigenous art in the UK. It is a gathering of artistic activism – from painting to live performance to video installation to engaged practice – showcasing the latest Austronesian performative art, power and knowledge focused on shifting the current global interest in Indigenous arts to be one that is Indigenous-led conservations and collaborations. 

[1] Wanda Nanibush, Contexts: Thinking and Engaging with the Decolonial, Afterall 45 (UAL Central Saint Martins: Spring/Summer 2018), 29. 

Curated by Dr Biung Ismahasan
​PhD in Curating at the University of Essex’s Centre for Curatorial Studies 


An exhibition designed to reveal our radical thoughts, artistic activism and the latest Austronesian performative and curatorial knowledge from the Taiwanese Indigenous perspectives. 

Curation: Biung Ismahasan 彼勇．依斯瑪哈單 (英國艾塞克斯大學 哲學與藝術史學院 策展學研究中心 策展學博士) 
​
We are very happy to announce that this forthcoming exhibition, along with The Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE) Goldsmiths University of London  will be hosting the UK's first exhibition of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art in May 2018. 

The role of Indigeneity gained increasing significance as instruments for socio-cultural identity as well as the performative authentication of human rights and social authority. From a colonised perspective, this exhibition aims to vindicate the allegedly genetic explanation of Taiwanese Indigenous drinking problem as a counter-narrative to defy the consistent slander and degradation by non-Indigenous authorities and peoples. In the form of performativity, installation and artwork, both dynamic and tacit terms can be better understood and enable resistance to ongoing colonialism and expropriation. 

This is an unprecedented Taiwanese Indigenous curation by London-based Indigenous Taiwanese independent curator Biung Ismahasan at London's institutional space: 

Lower Atrium Space of Professor Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmiths, University of London   www.gold.ac.uk/icce/ (SE14 6NW) between 21 - 25 May 2018 

Information of the Invited Indigenous Artists 


​Don Don Hounwn / Truku Nation - Performance (Smapux) Artist  

Hounwn (b.1985) comes from the Mqmgi Community of Truku Nation in Xiulin Township, Hualien County of the eastern Taiwan. He is the inheritor of several traditional arts and cultures in his tribe, such as lubu (mouth harp), tatuk (xylophone), as well as traditional songs and rituals. In his arts of performance, action, video and installation, he infuses the traditional arts and cultures he inherits to create his unique pieces. He is well versed in the traditional musical instruments and composition techniques of his tribe. In his performance are the genes of Indigenous peoples who have survived different ever-changing environments with perseverance and tenderness in their hearts. He is in his element when telling stories or performing on stage, demonstrating his natural gift as an indigenous performance artist. Through his art, he shares contemporary narratives from cross-gender and cross-generational perspectives about how Indigenous peoples have been evolving and adjusting themselves to ever-changing environments.
  
 Documents / Links

Eleng Luluan / Rukai Nation - Installational Artist and Sculptor  

Luluan (b.1968) was born in the Haocha Community of Rukai Nation in Pingtung County of the southern Taiwan. She sought a space for her self-realisation and an artistic inspiration source for her artistic creation. In 2002 she was nominated for the 10th Taishin Arts Award competition, which not only recognises professional creative achievements in Taiwan, but is also dedicated to establishing a platform enabling international networking for contemporary Taiwanese artists. In 2012, she attended an artist-in-residence programme in New Calendonia and participated in the joint exhibition Beyond the Boundary: Contemporary Indigenous Art of Taiwan; in the same year she had her solo exhibition Fractures in the Memories of Life: Silently Await. 

 Documents / Links

Eval Malinjinnan / Bunun Nation - Interdisciplinary Painter 

​Malinjinnan (b. 1971) is a visual artist, belonging to the Takitudu group of the Bunun people from the Bukai (Wujie) Community of the Nantou County in the central Taiwan. With her multi-cultural upbringing, she has experienced the clash of ‘us-and-others’, which has spawned her efforts to diversity socio-economic changes and to foreground the importance of identity recognition. Through her sojourn in Japan, the United States and now in Australia, she has attempted to share Bunun cultural values throughout the world by re-awakening the worldly Indigenous mutual practice, storytelling, in the form of visual art. She believes that only language can bring the light to a precarious culture. In which that language can be voiced in literature, ethnomusicology and art. Her works feature the flux of modernity and convention with the Bunun mythological touch, in hoping to narrate the story from Taiwan, more importantly, that we exist.

Documents / Links
​
Biung Ismahasan / Bunun Nation - Independent Curator-cum-Artist and Researcher 

Ismahasan (b.1984) is an independent curator-cum-artist and academic researcher from Namasia's Dakanuwa Community, Kaohsiung County of the southern Taiwan. He is currently a Practice-Based PhD Candidate in Curating from the Centre for Curatorial Studies at the University of Essex, East England. He is also an active member of IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (www.iktsite.org). He is strongly committed to promoting Taiwanese Indigenous visual culture and contemporary arts through contemporary curation. His research interests are Indigenous curatorial practice and decolonial aesthetics, with a particular emphasis on the history of Indigenous contemporary art: contemporary discourses about the production, distribution and reception of exhibitions; the issues of Indigeneity, participation and performativity; and the historiography of curation and exhibition design.

 Documents / Links

Hsu-Hung Huang / Han Nation - Interior and Product Designer 
 
Hsu-Hung Sean Huang (b. 1984), an interior and product designer, aims to re-build a bridge for dialogue between the world and Taiwan’s culture through contemporary designs. He has obtained a Master of Arts with Merit in Product & Furniture Design from London Kingston University in 2017. He is strongly committed to figure out how to value and transform cultural environment much longer than just a trend, meaning culture must survive in these concrete structures that cannot be removed, yet must be reformed in a way that is elegant and beautiful for our time. 

Documents / Links

​Yu-Hsien Hsueh / Han Nation - Choreographer and Contemporary Dancer 

​Hsueh (b. 1995) has obtained a professional diploma from the Royal Dance Academy (Real Conservatorio Profesional de Danza Mariemma) in Madrid, Spain. Since 2009 she has performed with a dancing troupe run by her mother, He Lian-Hua, that teaches indigenous teenagers in tribal communities of southern Taiwan contemporary dance that combines flamenco and indigenous Taiwanese dance. She was invited to participate with the performance project From Pink to Dark I and II, which has been directed by Biung Ismahasan since 2014.

Documents / Links

​Invited Performers:
Ayi-yanga First Taiwanese Ethnomusicology Ensemble 
check here for Ayi-yanga performing events 



Performing contemporary renderings of traditional ballads, Ayi-yanga is committed to the collection and adaptation of Taiwanese Indigenous folk songs and musical instruments. In the Indigenous Paiwan language, Ayi-yanga means ‘missing dearly’, with connotations of greeting. 

‘Standing on the land of the spirits of their ancestors, we sing ancient ballads in search of life’s melodies and in search of the way home. We follow the echoes of the ancient melodies to look back from the present as we walk along the path of the music of Taiwan’s Indigenous people.’ 

Performers 
​
Djanav Zengror     丹耐夫 正若
Umar Balalavi       烏瑪芙 巴剌拉芾
ZepulZengror        紫布爾 正若
Palahu Balalavi     張麗珠
Hanaku Balalavi    張麗花
Jen-Ting Chien      簡任廷
Vika Tainsikian       劉金蕉
Abin Balalavi          張麗美

​Performative Songs 

Ualjaiyuin 報身分
Dalah Sintusaus 大地之歌
Nose Flute Performance by Djanav Zengror
Sima Cisbung Bav 聞槍聲
Maciluna 指路
Bislai 飲酒歌
Malistapan 報戰功
Halilu iya 快樂頌  

The Story of the Paiwan Nose Flute by Djanav Zengror
 
‘Paiwan nose flute resembles sounds made by the Hundred-Pacer Snake, which is a guardian deity and an ancient ancestor of the Paiwan Nation peoples. In their tradition, the Hundred-Pacer Snake will grow feathers and turn into an eagle after it grows old to assist the chief of the tribe in safeguarding the land. The snake will hide on a cliff where no one can see and omit a low voice during the transformation, as if it were bidding farewell to life on land. 
 
Traditionally, only gentlemen from noble families and warriors could play the twin-piped nose flute, and only Paiwan Nation peoples of noble birth could play the nose flute that carries carvings. The sound of the nose flute is low and full of sorrow as if weeping and expressing the emotion of missing someone dearly. It is usually played when a man courts a woman....’ 

Curated by Biung Ismahasan  

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