Paiwan artist Aruwai Kaumakan said she was inspired to revive the art of Paiwan traditional weaving after receiving a dream vision from her ancestors following Typhoon Morakot in 2009.
Aruwai, who last year won the Pulima Art Festival’s grand award in the visual arts, on Monday opened an exhibition at Pintung University of Science Technology, where she studies fashion design and business management.
Utilizing traditional totems and elaborate scrollwork, her woven creations tell the stories of home and the lives of women, with her award-winning series of work. Pulse (脈動), prominently featuring the motifs of swirling river water and black slate tiles of Paiwan houses.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jo, Taipei Times
Daughter of the chieftain of Dashe (大社) village in Pintung County’s Sandimen Township (三地門) — one of the three communities devastated by the typhoon — Aruwai said she grew up immersed in the rituals and symbols that designated a woman’s social status in Paiwan society.
Her mother and grandmother, who she said were her first artistic mentors, taught her how to wear ceremonial headgear and clothes, as well as the meaning of each item, she said.
Her mother is particularly adept at taking apart traditional textiles and reassembling them into new creations, which inspired her to weave her creations using recycled cloth and other everyday fabrics, Aruwai said.
The scrollwork that appears in her creations as veins, butterflies and women’s ornamental hair pins is a technique she learned from jewelry designer Lee Fang-yu (黎芳瑜), she added.
“An artist needs to know where she comes from and where she is going to for her creations to soar,” Aruwai said. “More than a scion to an aristocratic line, I see myself as a torchbearer of my culture, which I embrace through creativity.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods