Aluaiy Pulidan (Aluiay Kaumakan)

Tavadran tribe, Paiwan people
Born 1970, Dashe village, Sandimen, Pingtung County, Taiwan
Lives and works in Sandimen

Aluaiy Pulidan’s dense, elegant, sculptural creations are grounded in an understanding of female consciousness as both independent and integral to maintaining connections within her ethnic group. In 2009, Pulidan’s village was destroyed by Typhoon Morakot and its population was forced to relocate. As a leader of her tribe, Pulidan initiated weaving workshops — unofficial women’s councils that also enabled Pulidan to expand her works into ambitious, encompassing installations of complex shapes, motifs and materials.

Pulidan works from a process of winding strands of found fabric into cords, which are then looped into concentric circles in a technique known as Lemikalik. Her works frequently references the human heart, whose pulse transcends ethnicities and possesses a ‘horizontal spreading kinetic energy’; and vines, which connect different parts of the land while mimicking the spread of nerves and capillaries across the skin. These are metaphors for her community’s efforts to survive and reconnect in the face of displacement.