Idas Losin

APT9

Born 1976 Hualien, Taiwan
Lives and works in New Taipei City, Taiwan

Idas Losin is a Taiwanese aboriginal artist of Truku and Atayal heritage. After graduating from high school, she began working on documentary films about Taiwanese tribes, focusing on the stories of elders. A touring exhibition of Indigenous Australian art at Taipei MOCA in 2003 inspired her to tell the stories of her own community through a visual, material practice. She has since travelled to Australia, North America and the Pacific to study the expression of indigenous and First Nations perspectives through art. Losin’s paintings are characterised by their fine brushwork and stark composition on a flat plane. Her portraits and landscapes often incorporate tattoos and woven patterns, or depict the topography of the Pacific. She is committed to issues relevant to Taiwanese Aboriginal people, and to exploring the narratives of the movement of Austronesian peoples, languages and cultures from Taiwan into the Pacific.

An artwork depicting a white-and-red boat or canoe floating on yellow-gold water, with some rocks or islands in the background.

Idas Losin / Taiwan b.1976 / Floating 2017 / Oil on canvas / 135 x 179 x 5cm / © Idas Losin / Image courtesy: The artist

Losin’s paintings range from expressions of Austronesian identity, incorporating tattoos, woven patterns and other cultural objects, to dreamlike renderings of island settings and seascapes. This selection of Losin’s works focuses on the tatara fishing canoes of the Tao people and their home of Lanyu (Orchid Island), off the south-east coast of Taiwan.

Losin’s ‘Orchid Island’ paintings reflect the significance of fishing for the Tao people, centring on the form of the tatara at rest, preparing to launch, and afloat in calm waters. These symmetrical vessels, with their distinctively upturned bow and stern, are typically decorated with carved and painted geometric emblems representing the sea, ancestral beings and the flying fish that play a major role in ceremonial cycles. With eyes at both ends, the boats are seen as extensions of the human body, linking heaven and earth. Also included with this series is a topographic rendering of Jimagaod (Lesser Orchid Island), an uninhabited volcanic islet to the island’s south.