Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies, 2021 – 2022

wool, cotton, silk on cloths by inking

Courtesy the artist, Paridrayan Community elder women, Linkous Kuljeljelje, Chun-Lun Chen & curator Biung Ismahasan

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and Cultural Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Sydney and assistance from the Council of Indigenous Peoples

Aluaiy Kaumakan belongs to a leading noble family of the Paiwan Nation from the Paridrayan Community of Pingtung County in southern Taiwan. She creates sculptures with textiles, fibers, copper and glass beads to weave organic forms. Aluaiy Kaumakan uses lemikalik, a Paiwan practice of weaving in concentric circles intertwining memories of tribal nobility. In 2009 Kaumakan’s village was hit by violent Typhoon Morakot, forcing people to relocate to the Rinari community. For Semasipu Remembering Our Intimacies Kaumakan has returned to her ancestral village to collect cultural belongings and objects printing on silk through a rubbing process. One of the important cultural objects is dredredan an ancestral earthenware reimaged in woven form. 

Kaumakan has connected members of her displaced community through a participatory process exploring the concept of Sicevudan which means emergence of the river in the deepest mountain. Elder women have lead ceremony with Kaumakan on returning to their ancestral waters. Semasipu means the sensorial ability to soothe lead by elder women. Kaumakan says ‘Rubbing carried the definition of my life, returning me to my ancestral town: Paridrayan community, my home, my cultural heritage, my childhood memories. After Typhoon Morakot on 8 August 2009, we were not allowed to return to our community. It is impossible for us to dismantle and relocate the community, so what should we do? By rubbing, letting that trace be produced through my hands, I carry something of that memory into my work.’