Idas Losin

Born 1976, Hualien City, Taiwan

Lives and works in New Taipei City, Taiwan

Truku/Atayal

UNSW Galleries

Traveller, 2024

acrylic paint

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

Courtesy the artist

There are more than 6,000 recorded languages in the world and roughly 1,000 of them belong to the same Austronesian language group. Originating in Taiwan and carried across the ocean via trade, travel, and colonisation, Austronesian languages have had millennia to extend as far as Indonesia, Hawai’i, Aotearoa New Zealand, Samoa, Madagascar, and Rapa Nui/Easter Island. Following this path, artist Idas Losin, who belongs to the Truku and Atayal Indigenous people of Taiwan, celebrates the largely ignored contributions made by her home country to a truly global dialogue.

In a project which has taken her to the furthest-flung locations where Austronesian languages are spoken, Idas has reconnected with her personal and cultural history in an inverted colonial expedition. Painting her impressions – in a subversion of the trope of the European male colonial voyager – this new mural combines works made by Idas in Rapa Nui to create a singular, fluid landscape. Here, worlds that seem far apart collide, connected by threads of language and culture which unspool from the artist’s Indigenous identity and traverse oceans as if they were a current.

Idas Losin is an artist from the Truku and Atayal tribes. Since 2013, Losin has visited Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Hawai’i, Guam, Aotearoa New Zealand, Tahiti, and other places to reflect upon the art of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan by observing the connections between Indigenous peoples and mainstream society abroad. Using oil painting as her main medium, Losin adopts original colours and fine brushwork to create imagery of different characters, patterns, cultural objects and issue-focused content to express her feelings about life, compassion for the land and explorations of her own heritage.

Read more about the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, by purchasing the catalogue here.