Indigenous relational space and performance: curating together towards sovereignty in Taiwan and beyond

This practice-based thesis explores the concepts of Indigenous relational space, performance and performative Indigeneity by ‘curating togetherness’ towards sovereignty in Taiwan and beyond. My curatorial projects – the most significant of which are Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art (2018) and Ngahi’ Routes: When Depth Become Experiment (2019) – reveal a tendency toward two distinct curatorial strategies, which I refer to as ‘Indigenous performative curation’ and ‘trans-Indigenous connecting spatiality.’ Broadly defined, these strategies capture the particularity of Indigenous-to-Indigenous cultural exchanges and collaborations. They also constitute an approach to reclaiming counter-narratives of cultural traditions, asserting embodied sovereignty and embracing land-based philosophies realised across tribal and state borders through performative modes of curation. The thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One charts the evolution of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art, including its historical development since 1990 and the advance of curatorial practice since 2010, to reconstruct the background of the curatorial narratives discussed below. Chapter Two focuses on three distinctive Indigenous relational practices – Truku Nation artist Dondon·Hounwn’s performance art, Rukai Nation sculptor Eleng Luluan’s installation art and my own performative practice as a Bunun Nation curator working at an Indigenous public cemetery. Chapter Three demonstrates how the relational practices of Indigenous performance were activated across Performative Encounters between Sápmi and Truku in Dispossessions. It examines the performative encounter and participatory engagements among homeland, tribal/clan-based kinship and global frameworks through a discussion of Northern Sápmi (Norway) artist Marita Isobel Solberg’s Chemical Chords and Truku (Taiwan) artist Dondon·Hounwn’s Awakening: Original Contract, which appeared in Dispossessions. This performance art exchange, broadly defined as trans-Indigenous connecting spatiality, captures the particularity of Indigenous-to-Indigenous cultural exchanges and collaborations, but also consists of a media conglomerate representing an invocation as a multi-authored approach to reclaiming counter-narratives of cultural traditions, asserting embodied sovereignty and embracing land-based philosophies across tribal and state borders. This thesis can not only foster meaningful cross-cultural encounters and participatory, relational experience towards sovereignty but also internally transform institutions’ interpretive banalities and hegemonic discourses.