Tree Tree Tree Person IV | Family Tree: Preface

Tree Tree Tree Person – Taroko Arts Residency Project has been conducting arts residency programs since 2015, inviting contemporary artists to stay at Hualien’s Taroko National Park – in an environment that is virtually impossible in any other contemporary art institution – to live among the indigenous residents of Cihara’ay (also known as the Dark tribe, Taiwan’s last tribe to live beyond the power grid). As the contemporary art community engages in exchange and practice with the local residents, the artists revisit, contemplate, and construct an imagined relationship between man and nature.

Continuing the curatorial theme “Weaving a Way Home,” initiated by eight women from the village last year, the research subject for Tree Tree Tree Person – Taroko Arts Residency Project IV is Family Tree: Preface, a painting created collectively by local women. Local women are invited to be on the curatorial team, in charge of theme development and research proposal arbitration. Family Tree: Preface originated from Family Tree, a resident project by Jing-Yun Ou in 2019. The project invited local women to weave the scenery and memories of their homes on cotton cloth, so as to develop a desiring relationship between man and land, to create an identification between self and land, and to continue the imagination of a relationship between nature and art within traditional territory.

In July 2020, Tree Tree Tree Person – Taroko Arts Residency Project IV resident researchers Ko-Hsin Yu, Candice Jee, Cheng-TeChin, and Liang-YuLiu will be staying at the Dali-Datong tribe for their research and are expected to present their results in Taipei’s TheCube Project Space in August. The exhibition will start from August 1 to August 23, 2020. More information on the events will be announced soon.

《seejiq mqdgiyaq-miniq dgiyaq alang truku IV》kikuyuh alnag nii ka mseupu lmnglung qpahun nii.2020 hngkawas mseupu smmalu 歐靜雲ni kikuyuh mniq alang dgiyaq,muda lmnglung mqpah qpahun nii o,splawa dha ka kikuyuh rmisuh matas sapah nniqan dha nanak,spowda na rnsuhan dha nii rmawah pnegluban seejiq ni dxgal.paah rsuhan nii du steura dha ka pnegluban hiya nanak ni dxgal.lmutut qpahun dxgal ta nanak ni empseupu ta qmeepah klgan knkla qmpah uuda nii.
*Taroko translation was assisted by Ms. Nac Hijiyu and Ms. Yaya Huwat.

Tree Tree Tree Person – Taroko Arts Residency Project IV
Curatorial Team｜Bnu Panasg, Chumay Haloshi, Icyang Pasang, Iyeiku Rikaw, Loqip Mulang, Nac Hijiyu, Simat Qurang, Yaya Huwat, Yuri Pasang
Resident Researcher｜Ko-Hsin Yu, Candice Jee, Cheng-Te Chin, Liang-Yu Liu
Exhibition｜Aug. 1－Aug. 23, 2020
Opening｜Aug. 1, 2020 (Sat.) 3－6pm
Venue｜TheCube Project Space (2F, No13, Aly 1, Ln 136, Sec 4, Roosevelt Rd, Taipei, Taiwan)
Hours｜Wed.－Sun., 2－8pm

Residency Project

Family Crest – Woman Art Circle
Resident Researcher: Ko-Hsin Yu
The concept of the project is to create a tribal women’s art circle, which would be a process of sharing, inspiring, and creating from each member’s memories about family. We expect to use the traditional woman craft skill, cross stitch, to create a unique symbol- “Family-Crest” for each member represent family history. The symbol could be applied as the decoration or protecting amulet and pass on in the family.

A Tree’s Insides and Outsides.
Resident Researcher: Candice Jee
In 2020, my garden project wishes to research further about how the Dali-Datong Truku people live with plants in their dwellings on the mountain. Through gardening with Truku family, I would like to document her knowledge and life with plants, possibly producing a series of drawings incorporating the organic material of our gardening. This would extend my engagement with one particular family to another in the community, extending the idea of the ‘family tree’. Within our exchange, there is the possibility to plan a garden at the previous site of Datong, and talk about what an imagination of that garden could be.

Truku People’s Back to Home Project 1: Si Mu Ke
Resident Researcher: Cheng-Te Chin
For the people of Bsngan in Taroko, going home means going up the mountain to Sakadang. Then, with the history of more than three hundred years of migration and development in the Liwuxi River Basin for Truku community, is it possible to go back to their older homeland? Therefore, my plan is to collaborate with the young and middle-aged Truku people to rediscover the way back to their ancestral hometown of Si Mu Ke and set up a monument for their migratory pedigree in the history.

The Food
Resident Researcher: Liang-Yu Liu
Tribal women live back and forth on the mountain and down the mountain, and it forms a unique rhythm of life. I am curious about what they like or not like to eat? What food do they like to cook? And how to cook these foods? What did they eat when they were young? I hope to understand the relationship between tribal women and food, and food-related memories.

About Resident Researcher

Ko-Hsin Yu
Engaged in contemporary fiber art and painting creation. Mainly presented in the style of “symbol narrative”, from the usual sketches, slowly accumulate metaphorical symbols belonging to self. These symbols are presented with ink stains, paint, or needlework. Let emotions and kinetic energy develop automatically during the creation process, forming a landscape where the inner and outer worlds overlap.

Candice Jee
An artist born in Perth, Australia of Malaysian Hakka descent, and currently based in Taipei. Her work investigates processes of displacement, movement and rearrangement as part of cultural identification. This generates various outcomes, in installations often consisting of sculpture, sound, architectural interventions, and living organisms (such as plants, soil and worms.) Constantly shifting materials and meanings echo the in-betweenness and accommodation of diaspora/migrant experience.

Cheng-Te Chin
Friends call him “A-de”, and he was also a key figure in the historical event of the Department of Fine Art in the Chinese Culture University. During this period, he and his classmates established the studio “Grass Arts Academy”. The studio at present continues their practice of producing postcards, printed with traditional images found within Taiwan’s historical documents. Apart from his collection of Taiwan’s historical documentation, he developed his artistic methodology through geographical fieldwork techniques. Though the action of erecting stones in the field, his artistic project reveals important elements of historical events that Taiwanese people tend to ignore.

Liang-Yu Liu
A Hakka from Taitung. She studied and worked in the north for more than 10 years, tired of the life in urban, and determined to return to the east. She is the woman who abandoned the architectural training to learning anthropology, but then took up the paintbrushes, and then found the soul in her delicate creation.