Yuma Taru

Atayal people
Born 1963, Xiangbi community, Tai’an township, Miaoli County, Taiwan
Lives and works in Miaoli

With a background as a schoolteacher raised in the Han Chinese system, Yuma Taru reconnected with her Atayal heritage while working as a civil servant at the Taichung Cultural Centre. Shocked by the dwindling understanding and cursory regard for customary cultural practices, she set about retrieving the techniques and designs of Atayal dyeing and weaving through her grandmother and tribal elders. Taru established a collective of local mothers dedicated to preserving surviving artefacts and knowledge, ultimately documenting some 300 garments and 10 000 designs. In 2016, she was named a national living treasure for her work.

Commissioned for APT10, The spiral of life – the tongue of the cloth (yan pala na hmali) – a mutual dialogue 2021 is a textile-based installation consisting of strikingly dyed ramie fibre weavings suspended in lyrical forms. These dynamic shapes reference the transmission of knowledge in Atayal language, which has no written form. Whether expressed as narrative or ballad, Taru sees this oral communication as a duet, always requiring the engagement of the listener.