Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts

Rao Aichin—Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast

About Rao Aichin

Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast shows a journey Rao Aichin had on which she created artworks while living her life from 1999 to 2023. The journey is woven out of her oil paintings, artistic act, and material experiments all together.

Rao created her very own ways of oil painting. One is to, right at the beginning of creation, step into the ring of “observing color intuitively” and to slip into color’s eagerness for shapes. Another is that, during her long stay in the wild, she observed the surroundings and changes. Especially, she repeatedly depicted Shitiping in Makotaay. And the other is to mix the above two ways so that she could recreate, recall, catch, and feel once again those unique moments in life. In the process of oil painting, both the active deployment of external environment and the self-forced display of internal time and space created “wait time” and formed a directional line pointing towards “pre-artistic-creation”. After repeatedly laying down layers of paint and keeping all marks, Rao let color itself remain its temporary images while flowing freely without framing by any shape. Finally, to arrange the process and leave a nomadic mark on a canvas, Rao selected each and every mark and interpreted them.

After the year 2005, the long stay in the wild motivated her not only to create “putting up a tent” pattern of pre-artistic-creation, but also to establish a relationship with environment. Thereafter, she gradually turned to create on surfaces other than canvas. In 2022, she stayed on Jinzun beach and traced Qili River time after time. She also conducted field studies on clay layers near the river and set up temporary houses on the spot where she could carry long-term experiments on materials. Those temporary houses were adjusted in different environments accordingly. For instance, she created the Connection series with thin materials used in crochet, creating a form of space sensing or an installation which is able to define a certain space. These houses became narrative spaces for Rao’s own migration routes. Born in northwestern Taiwan and as a female Hakka artist, Rao moved to the southeastern part of the island through action and labor. Besides, she accumulated internal patterns of moving and stories of migration.

The leading installations of pre-artistic-creation are a waiting axis generated through artistic creation led by the “putting up a tent” pattern. A switching-on axis was generated through a nomad life forced by each artistic creation. An occurring axis was generated through her long stay in the wild during the process of creation. Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast weaved the three axes: waiting, switching-on, and occurring. This exhibition is an exclusive journey for Rao on which she created artworks while living her everyday life.

Born in Longtan, Taoyuan, Rao Aichin swam in ponds and streams and climbed high mountains as a child, gaining the experience of physical effort and resonance in the natural wilderness. In 1998, Rao settled in the Katratripulr village in Zhiben, Taitung, and began to work on oil paintings, installations, and public art. In 2002 and 2022m she joined the collective living in the Open Circle Tribe at the Jinzun beach. After participating in the “Hweilan International Artists Workshop” in 2005, Rao has gradually developed the production mode of “tenting” and in situ practice. She focuses on the momentary perceptions or memories of her personal life. Through physical interaction in the environment or on canvas, she transforms potential life messages into an extending and penetrating space of perception. In each of her practice, Rao has developed a highly personal aesthetic vocabulary. In 2011, to resist the “Miramar Resort Build-Operate-Transfer development project,” Rao was stationed at Shanyuan Beach with her friends by tent-building and contributed to the consequent environmental protest of the east coast artist community. She is an art practitioner who is always on the move.

Rao Aichin—Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast

Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast shows a journey Rao Aichin had on which she created artworks while living her life from 1999 to 2023. The journey is woven out of her oil paintings, artistic act, and material experiments all together.

Rao created her very own ways of oil painting. One is to, right at the beginning of creation, step into the ring of “observing color intuitively” and to slip into color’s eagerness for shapes. Another is that, during her long stay in the wild, she observed the surroundings and changes. Especially, she repeatedly depicted Shitiping in Makotaay. And the other is to mix the above two ways so that she could recreate, recall, catch, and feel once again those unique moments in life. In the process of oil painting, both the active deployment of external environment and the self-forced display of internal time and space created “wait time” and formed a directional line pointing towards “pre-artistic-creation”. After repeatedly laying down layers of paint and keeping all marks, Rao let color itself remain its temporary images while flowing freely without framing by any shape. Finally, to arrange the process and leave a nomadic mark on a canvas, Rao selected each and every mark and interpreted them.

After the year 2005, the long stay in the wild motivated her not only to create “putting up a tent” pattern of pre-artistic-creation, but also to establish a relationship with environment. Thereafter, she gradually turned to create on surfaces other than canvas. In 2022, she stayed on Jinzun beach and traced Qili River time after time. She also conducted field studies on clay layers near the river and set up temporary houses on the spot where she could carry long-term experiments on materials. Those temporary houses were adjusted in different environments accordingly. For instance, she created the Connection series with thin materials used in crochet, creating a form of space sensing or an installation which is able to define a certain space. These houses became narrative spaces for Rao’s own migration routes. Born in northwestern Taiwan and as a female Hakka artist, Rao moved to the southeastern part of the island through action and labor. Besides, she accumulated internal patterns of moving and stories of migration.

The leading installations of pre-artistic-creation are a waiting axis generated through artistic creation led by the “putting up a tent” pattern. A switching-on axis was generated through a nomad life forced by each artistic creation. An occurring axis was generated through her long stay in the wild during the process of creation. Fermentation between Northwest and Southeast weaved the three axes: waiting, switching-on, and occurring. This exhibition is an exclusive journey for Rao on which she created artworks while living her everyday life.

About Rao Aichin

Born in Longtan, Taoyuan, Rao Aichin swam in ponds and streams and climbed high mountains as a child, gaining the experience of physical effort and resonance in the natural wilderness. In 1998, Rao settled in the Katratripulr village in Zhiben, Taitung, and began to work on oil paintings, installations, and public art. In 2002 and 2022m she joined the collective living in the Open Circle Tribe at the Jinzun beach. After participating in the “Hweilan International Artists Workshop” in 2005, Rao has gradually developed the production mode of “tenting” and in situ practice. She focuses on the momentary perceptions or memories of her personal life. Through physical interaction in the environment or on canvas, she transforms potential life messages into an extending and penetrating space of perception. In each of her practice, Rao has developed a highly personal aesthetic vocabulary. In 2011, to resist the “Miramar Resort Build-Operate-Transfer development project,” Rao was stationed at Shanyuan Beach with her friends by tent-building and contributed to the consequent environmental protest of the east coast artist community. She is an art practitioner who is always on the move.

Living in the Mountains Solo Exhibition of Imin Mafaliw

About Imin Mafaliw

Like many indigenous artists living in tribal villages, Imin organically integrates his works and daily manual labor, from fishing and hunting for everyday life and collecting driftwood for his art practices. The physical practice of collecting the materials allows the artist to experience the journey of death and rebirth that driftwood takes. Just as prey is more than food for hunters, driftwood is way beyond material for artists, but material for the identity of life and learning. Imin reshapes driftwood, a material with a unique sense of life forged by displacement, into a song of a border exile’s soul – an individual who resists being assimilated by urban civilization in the face of the pervasive control of globalized capitalism. The inner exile, who feels displaced even if they stand on their own land, shares a similar destiny with driftwood, both on the margin of civilization.

The solo exhibition of Imin serves as a retrospective and prospective of his journey as an artist. It encapsulates through the artist's first solo exhibition, "Useful Unusefulness" (2007), the "0.1 Second of Life on Earth" series (2013), the "Penetrate" series (2018), and the recent "Planet" series. Imin works with a chainsaw to roughly cut driftwood and then carve it in detail. He preserves the rough texture left by the chainsaw as it cuts through the wood and keeps the traces of times on the driftwood. The artist employs the reduced abstract language of geometric symbols as a metaphor for humanity's unrestrained demand for the Earth, narrating "the current situation of the world's indigenous people and humanity as a whole in the contemporary Anthropocene environment." However, as the Earth's resources are rapidly depleting and humankind turns to the vastness of the universe, hoping to find another cultivable planet, the artist poses his question as a "collector of exiles": "Will we be able to solve the problem of all mankind once we land on the outer space?"

The Melanesian proverb says, "The place where the umbilical cord is cut is called home. However, Imin, born on the mountainside of Katratripul, says, "The mountain I see is no longer in its primitive state. I see a mountain that has been cut. The mountain I behold was once in another state. The mountain I behold now is like how it is." For him, the answer to life and where he belongs is always in this mountain.

Imin Mafaliw is a Puyuma artist from Katratripul village (Zhihben) in Taitung. He has been committed to working on driftwood sculpture for more than twenty years. His early works were half realistic and half abstract geometric forms, offering a straightforward and nonlinear narrative of tribal culture. In 2008, he was invited to New Caledonia for a residency at the Tjibaou Culture Center. A year later, in 2009, Typhoon Morakot devasted Southern Taiwan. These impacts of a foreign land and his hometown have pushed him to move away from narrating traditional cultural experiences to attempting to tell the story of the shared exploited situation of indigenous people worldwide in the contemporary era through the structure of driftwood. In 2012, his “Take Away” series won the first prize in the first Pulima Art Award and was collected by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. In 2020, the “Rao Ai-Chin Imin Studio” was officially opened, a nature-oriented lifestyle space created by the two artists. The space embodies the partnership of two individuals. Imin is planning to establish a driftwood school in collaboration with the Hunter School founded by Sakinu.

Living in the Mountains Solo Exhibition of Imin Mafaliw

Like many indigenous artists living in tribal villages, Imin organically integrates his works and daily manual labor, from fishing and hunting for everyday life and collecting driftwood for his art practices. The physical practice of collecting the materials allows the artist to experience the journey of death and rebirth that driftwood takes. Just as prey is more than food for hunters, driftwood is way beyond material for artists, but material for the identity of life and learning. Imin reshapes driftwood, a material with a unique sense of life forged by displacement, into a song of a border exile’s soul – an individual who resists being assimilated by urban civilization in the face of the pervasive control of globalized capitalism. The inner exile, who feels displaced even if they stand on their own land, shares a similar destiny with driftwood, both on the margin of civilization.

The solo exhibition of Imin serves as a retrospective and prospective of his journey as an artist. It encapsulates through the artist's first solo exhibition, "Useful Unusefulness" (2007), the "0.1 Second of Life on Earth" series (2013), the "Penetrate" series (2018), and the recent "Planet" series. Imin works with a chainsaw to roughly cut driftwood and then carve it in detail. He preserves the rough texture left by the chainsaw as it cuts through the wood and keeps the traces of times on the driftwood. The artist employs the reduced abstract language of geometric symbols as a metaphor for humanity's unrestrained demand for the Earth, narrating "the current situation of the world's indigenous people and humanity as a whole in the contemporary Anthropocene environment." However, as the Earth's resources are rapidly depleting and humankind turns to the vastness of the universe, hoping to find another cultivable planet, the artist poses his question as a "collector of exiles": "Will we be able to solve the problem of all mankind once we land on the outer space?"

The Melanesian proverb says, "The place where the umbilical cord is cut is called home. However, Imin, born on the mountainside of Katratripul, says, "The mountain I see is no longer in its primitive state. I see a mountain that has been cut. The mountain I behold was once in another state. The mountain I behold now is like how it is." For him, the answer to life and where he belongs is always in this mountain.

About Imin Mafaliw

Imin Mafaliw is a Puyuma artist from Katratripul village (Zhihben) in Taitung. He has been committed to working on driftwood sculpture for more than twenty years. His early works were half realistic and half abstract geometric forms, offering a straightforward and nonlinear narrative of tribal culture. In 2008, he was invited to New Caledonia for a residency at the Tjibaou Culture Center. A year later, in 2009, Typhoon Morakot devasted Southern Taiwan. These impacts of a foreign land and his hometown have pushed him to move away from narrating traditional cultural experiences to attempting to tell the story of the shared exploited situation of indigenous people worldwide in the contemporary era through the structure of driftwood. In 2012, his “Take Away” series won the first prize in the first Pulima Art Award and was collected by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. In 2020, the “Rao Ai-Chin Imin Studio” was officially opened, a nature-oriented lifestyle space created by the two artists. The space embodies the partnership of two individuals. Imin is planning to establish a driftwood school in collaboration with the Hunter School founded by Sakinu.

Works