2023 | Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, Hayward Gallery, London
2022 | 23rd Biennale of Sydney, Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, Sydney
2021 | You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet, Centre Pompidou-Metz
2021 | South Link Arts Festival, Taimali, Taitung
2021 | 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
2021 | Distances between Us and the Future: An Exhibition of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art, Taiwan Indigenous
Peoples Cultural Park, Pingtung
2021 | Taipei Biennial – You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei
2020 | Yokohama Triennale – Afterglow, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama
2019 | Contemporary Art from Greater Sandimen, Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park, Pingtung
2018 | Pulima Art Award Exhibition, MoCA Taipei
Name of artworks : Cevulj, Path of a Family
Media : fibers, mud-dye cloth, charcoal, ash
Year : 2023
In 2014, Aluaiy returned to the old site of the Paridrayan community, which she had left after Typhoon Morakot (August 2009), and began working on her Rubbings series. While touching the stone walls built by her ancestors, she happened to see a plant sprouting through a crack, which showed her that even though her people no longer reside here, life and spirits still thrive and remain connected. From the rocks, vegetation, cloth fragments, and charcoal in the stone walls of the homes, the history that she has created rubbings and paintings of has allowed her to hear nature comforting grieving, frail souls. Meanwhile, she is the sprout who has found the power and direction to continue living.
Before a Paiwan ritual, millet stalks are lit to produce smoke (cevulj), which is used to transmit messages between the human and spirit world. For instance, during a murialjak (a ritual for newborns), smoke brings the blessings of the ancestors to the child, allowing their spirits and power to continue within the body, mind, and spirit of the new arrival to make him/her truly human.
Being from a mamazangiljan family (core of the tribe) and a Christian, Aluaiy is always thinking about the conflict between her traditional culture and her faith, along with the issues of cultural breakdown, loss of land, and the dispersion of her people from their home village. In Cevulj, Path of a Family, which is part of her Rubbings series, her pigments come from sediment and ash from burnt vegetation from the old village, and are combined with rubbings and weaving to depict the spiritual significance of smoke (a symbol of ritual, her home village, and the Holy Spirit in the Bible), serving as a witness of existence and pointing the way home for her people and their souls.
