Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies

Aluaiy Kaumakan belongs to a leading noble family of the Paiwan Nation from the Paridrayan Community of Pingtung County in southern Taiwan. In 2009 her village was hit by violent Typhoon Morakot, forcing people to relocate to the Rinari community. For Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies, Kaumakan 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 pot reimagined 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 led ceremony with Kaumakan on returning to their ancestral waters. Semasipumeans the sensorial ability to soothe led by Elder women.

'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.'—Aluaiy Kaumakan