At the core of this exhibition is the need for women’s togetherness: togetherness as a lived practice and togetherness as a methodology, whether that be curatorial approach or personal philosophy. Decolonising Indigenous Taiwanese contemporary art must include privileging the voices and input of Indigenous women artists. By bringing together the voices of respected Elders and three very powerful women artists, the exhibition generates togetherness through trans-Indigenous cultural exchanges across generations. It is about the transmission of knowledge between people, land and river.
​by Biung Ismahasan 

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Spokesperson Taiwan Presidential Office Kolas Yotaka's recommendation for 'Resurgence and Solidarity: Indigenous Taiwanese Women's Art' exhibition 

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Pinuyumayan Nation artist Milay Mavaliw discusses her works Resurgence - 再起 and Indigenous Women - 卑南族女人  2021

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Rukai Nation artist Eleng Luluan discusses her piece Ali sa be sa be - 土石流 (Rugged Rock Cliffs) 2021

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​Paiwan Nation artist Aluaiy Kaumakan discusses the background to her piece Flies and Shifts in Between Time - 時光荏苒 2021

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Curator Biung Ismahasan leads us on a curatorial talk the exhibition RESURGENCE AND SOLIDARITY: INDIGENOUS TAIWANESE WOMEN'S ART at the seminar 'Local Learning: Everyday Activism, Everyday Resistances - What can I do?'

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ORIGINS Festival of First Nations Artistic Director Michael Walling  leads us on a speech of the collaborative exhibition RESURGENCE AND SOLIDARITY: INDIGENOUS TAIWANESE WOMEN'S ART at the Taiwan's opening on 20 March 2021. 

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 Exhibition Opening Video - RESURGENCE AND SOLIDARITY: INDIGENOUS TAIWANESE WOMEN'S ART on 20 March 2021

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 RESURGENCE AND SOLIDARITY: INDIGENOUS TAIWANESE WOMEN'S ART exhibition promotion before the opening 

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策展論述

我們站「在一起」的原因是因為需要團結，團結為一種方式，無論是以團體力量抑或是個人哲思，從觀察性別與文化、群體秩序和自我追求的擺盪中，通過屬於女性藝術家的價值、方法與知識，她們的聲音應該存在而被看見，以集結她們各自的身體經驗與生命歷程，用創作的方式來展現對事物的觀點，以不同的方式去探討相同的議題，抑或是以同樣的方式去探討不同的議題，在失序、敗退、晦暗以及疏離的層次上，啟動另類的文化與團結進而產生共鳴。

一個人的聲音猶如水滴，一群人的聲音可以凝聚成河流的力量，在一個空間裡各自發聲、集體綻放。女性的身體是人類進入這個世界的第一個居所，她們的自體能量是強大而溫柔的，在每一個時代裡，她們是安靜而堅實的存在著，通過她們手中的物件，投射女性內心的真實處境與潛意識的存在，面對族群文化記憶的肌理與環境劇烈變化的狀態，在生命旅程中逐漸地拼湊起來。

《女性團結：接受．轉向．擴張》展覽試圖從自身經歷、生命記憶與文化變革的創作，探討「接受、轉向、擴張」的藝術進程，如何通過安身立命、貫穿性別身體，時間及歷史被壓縮凝結成一種女性團結的空間模式，有關於階級與文化的消逝、女性話語權和環境關懷的問題對於許多女性藝術家而言至關重要，在她們熟悉的現實背景因素下，逃離或遠離內在恐慌的心理狀態。

​本展覽分為四個子題：ㄧ、環境互惠; 二、文化地景; 三、療癒後的轉向; 四、物件的力量，來回應整個展覽的核心精神，並邀請國內藝術家 米類．瑪法琉 Milay Mavaliw、峨冷．魯魯安 Eleng Luluan、阿儒瓦苡．篙瑪竿 Aluaiy Kaumakan，將其對不同議題內容的關懷，統整在此四個子題之下的深入討論及其延伸，並試圖從女性藝術團結的激撞，創造更多可能思考的面向和觀點。

策展人 彼勇．依斯瑪哈單 Biung Ismahasan

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Curatorial Statement

At the core of this exhibition is the need for women’s togetherness, because we need to unite. Women have long been the driving creative force behind Indigenous Taiwanese art, yet their individual contributions have been largely unrecognised, treated as anonymous representations of entire cultures. Working through togetherness, this exhibition aims to gather the physical experiences and life stories of women artists, to show their viewpoints in creative ways, to throw new light on perennial concerns, and to discuss new concerns in ways informed by tradition. In a global space of disorder, decline, obscurity, and alienation, it initiates an alternative culture and a way of being together.

A woman’s voice is like a drop of water, and the voices of a group of women can be condensed into the power of a river, amplifying their individual voices and blooming collectively in a space. The female body is the first dwelling place for human beings to enter this world. Their own energy is strong and gentle. In every generation, they exist quietly and solidly. Through the powerful objects in their hands, they project the inner heart of women. Lived and subconscious experiences are gradually pieced together in their life journeys, responding to the texture of ethnic cultural memory and to drastic changes in the environment.
 
Resurgence and Solidarity: Indigenous Taiwanese Women’s Art attempts to explore the artistic process of ‘acceptance, shift, and expansion’ from the creation of personal experience, life memory, and cultural change. It asks how time and history might be compressed and condensed into a spatial model of women’s unity through lived experience in the gendered body. Questions about the disappearance of class and culture, women’s right to speak, and environmental care are of vital importance to many female artists. They are familiar with trauma - and their art offers at once a response and an escape. 
 
This exhibition consists of four sub-themes:

1.       Environmental reciprocity
2.      Cultural landscape
3.      Turn after healing
4.      The power of objects
 
These themes respond to the core spirit of the entire exhibition, through the work of Indigenous Taiwanese artists Milay Mavaliw, Eleng Luluan and Aluaiy Kaumakan. The exhibition integrates these themes through their careful, deep exploration through art, offering new perspectives through the activation of female artistic unity.

​Curated by Biung Ismahasan
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The project also benefits from the Artistic Director Michael Walling
Border Crossings’ ORIGINS Festival of First Nations, London originsfestival.com

* ‘Indigeneity’ and ‘Indigenous’ have been capitalised throughout this catalogue in order to demonstrate the centrality of cultural identity. Capitalisation suggests the rights of sovereignty movements, land rights, the rights of the earth, return to Indigenous women’s role in our societies and much more dreaming that cannot be contained in a policy document. 

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Today the rights of women, the protection of Elders, and environmental concerns are critical for many Indigenous Taiwanese women. There is a powerful sense of their search for new unexplored possibilities, as they strive to carve out a place for themselves, an escape or departure from the familiar and the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic. They deliberately locate themselves in foreign or alien environments with an awareness of their difference, finding connections, experimenting with intensities. The artists in this exhibition, all of whom identify as feminists, make these journeys from the specific starting point of Native community experience, their sovereign words and concerns about environmental reciprocity. 

Cutting edge and contemporary, essentially Indigenous in its decolonial modes of expression, Resurgence and Solidarity: Indigenous Taiwanese Women’s Art is an international collaboration between research-based exhibitions. International partners include: Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park (Pingtung, Taiwan), Border Crossings' ORIGINS Festival of First Nations (London, UK), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (Taipei, Taiwan), National Taitung Living Art Center (Taitung, Taiwan), Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš Sámi Center for Contemporary Art (Karasjok, Norway), and ISLA Center for the Arts, University of Guam (Guam, USA). It is a gathering of global Indigenous female artistic activism – including painting, live performance, video and installation, socially engaged practice and  performative encounters – showcasing contemporary Indigenous women’s performative art, power and knowledge and focused on shifting the current global interest in Indigenous arts towards Indigenous-led conservations and collaborations. 

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