Taiwan Today

Paiwan artist Sakuliu Pavavalung is inspiring indigenous communities to preserve their heritage through his diverse work.

Wearing a magnificent feathered headdress and a traditional outfit of blue shirt and embroidered vest, indigenous artist Sakuliu Pavavalung stole the show at the National Award for Arts April 3 last year in New Taipei City. Standing next to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the other winners, he grinned ear to ear as he became the first aboriginal person to receive the prize in the fine arts category. The honors are the country’s most prestigious in the artistic and cultural arenas.

Born in 1960 in picturesque Sandimen Township nestled in the mountains of southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County, Sakuliu is a member of the Paiwan tribe, one of the nation’s 16 officially recognized indigenous groups. He comes from a creative family—his younger brother is Etan Pavavalung, famed for his distinctive and dreamily painted woodcarvings.

Sakuliu is both prolific and versatile. He is an animator, author, documentary filmmaker, painter, potter and sculptor, and has worked in materials spanning clay, glass, metal, stone and wood. His pieces have been included in exhibitions at home and abroad and feature in several permanent collections including at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA) in the southern Taiwan city, National Museum of Prehistory (NMP) in Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan, and the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines in Taipei.

His work is characterized by repeated motifs taken from indigenous cultures. Animals like boar and deer are frequent subjects, for example, because of the importance of hunting to male members of his tribe in the past. The illustration “The Hunting Ground through Generations” is a lively dance of men armed with arrows and spears in pursuit of fearsome tusked boar. “Deer Friend,” a sculpture hewn from stone and bronze of a mother deer with her two young balanced atop her back, reflects the bonds within a family and between the community and the land. The latter is on permanent exhibition on the lawn outside KMFA.

Conserving Culture

Over the decades, the celebrated artist has taken time away from his creative work to focus on preserving and promoting aboriginal heritage. “The three treasured crafts in Paiwan culture are bronze knives, glass beads and clay pots,” he said. “However, the expertise needed to continue these practices is disappearing.”

Taking the mission seriously, Sakuliu has conducted meticulous research and worked to pass on the knowledge he has acquired by teaching others or conveying it in print or film. “I want my creations to inspire young tribal members to reflect on our cultural identity, understand our values and find ways to preserve them,” he said.

Sakuliu has also endeavored to foster a sense of appreciation and respect for aboriginal culture among the public at large. “I want to help improve things and influence the mainstream perception of indigenous peoples,” he said. In his early 20s, he set out to reinvigorate the Paiwan tradition of pot-making through studying old documents, collecting oral histories from tribal elders and compiling them in a book. “Ancestral Home” won the Golden Tripod Awards for Publications in 2014 for capturing the complexity, depth and spirituality of Paiwan pottery. The annual awards are organized by the Ministry of Culture to honor outstanding local books, magazines and publishers.

Indigenous Empowerment

After he received the National Award for Arts last April, Sakuliu used his acceptance speech to talk about how he feels a great responsibility to help young people in aboriginal communities. “One of the key tasks is teaching children to appreciate art and to place value in their own and other people’s cultures, languages and religions,” he said.

A major part of his work reinvigorating cultural practices has focused on empowering communities and getting youths to embrace their identity and explore their heritage. In 2017, at the invitation of the Hualien County Government in eastern Taiwan, Sakuliu spent several months teaching young members of the Bunun tribe how to construct traditional houses from slate. The project encouraged trainees to take the skills they acquired and build similar structures in their villages to keep the practice alive. He has also held countless workshops around the country teaching young aboriginals how to draw, sculpt and make traditional clay pots. His goal is to arm them with know-how that gives them greater earning potential.

Lu Mei-fen (盧梅芬), an associate curator at NMP, spent considerable time researching Sakuliu for a biography she wrote that featured in a series of 10 books on outstanding local artists commissioned by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in the central city of Taichung. “What sets Sakuliu apart is his work safeguarding the interests and rights of indigenous peoples and his efforts to boost their cultural self-confidence,” Lu said. “That’s an important reason, on top of his artistic talent, why he came to the attention of the National Award for Arts’ judges.” According to Lu, Sakuliu was a pioneer of the 1990s movement to teach indigenous art to communities.

Anthropologist Chiang Bien (蔣斌), director of the Center of Austronesian Culture at National Taitung University, has known Sakuliu since they were both young men. It was Chiang’s field studies that inspired the artist to conduct his own research many years ago. “Sakuliu’s always been concerned about his hometown, his tribe and all aboriginal people and he has become a local opinion-maker,” he said. “He’s one of the leading figures in the nation’s indigenous movement.”

Art from the Heart

According to Chiang, Sakuliu’s stature in the art world—his works typically command a high price—has made him a positive role model for young aboriginal people. KMFA, in particular, has long courted him. From December 2015 to March the following year, the museum staged his solo exhibition titled “A Memory of Light.” That show featured a house constructed from neatly stacked slate slabs, fat-bellied clay pots with swirling motifs and atmospheric sketches of village activities by firelight.

Tseng Mei-chen (曾媚珍), a senior researcher at the museum, said Sakuliu is one of the practitioners most often invited to attend artist-in-residence programs, exhibitions and seminars aimed at promoting indigenous crafts. KMFA has 23 of his artworks, including sculptures and drawings, in its collection. Relentless research has enabled him to accurately portray indigenous elements. According to Tseng, he is a “walking dictionary of Paiwan culture.”

His work has gained such a following because it has a warmth and simplicity, overlain at times with his sense of humor, she added. In the clay figure “Lighting a Pipe,” a tribal elder attempts to use an electric bulb to light up a smoke, reflecting the misunderstandings that may arise when someone living in a remote area is confronted with unfamiliar technology.

The art reflects the man, Chiang said. He is good natured, open-minded and tolerant and his creations embody his personality and attitude toward life. “Sakuliu’s pieces are filled with emotion and humor and he’s constantly experimenting with different materials and techniques, making art with an impact and in a diversity of forms.”

That versatility may be because of how Paiwan culture views art. “We don’t have a word for artist in our language,” Sakuliu said. “We call someone who has several handicraft skills ‘pulima.’” Likewise, he added, the closest Paiwan word to artwork is “malang,” which means “beautiful thing.” After all, that is exactly what he does. He creates beautiful things.

Write to Kelly Her at kher@mofa.gov.tw