Be a Wall, to Protect the Core

Since 2009, Lin Lin has been intentionally recording the elders’ collective lives in her tribe whether it’s through the collection of clothes colors and cultural significances, or the text book making of tribal language. She is trying to piece her own cultural puzzles.

Lin Lin and her husband Huang Jin-cheng are running a studio Pakavulay Design. She always believes in her heart, very firmly with not much doubt even when she chooses to be an artist. After graduating from junior high school, she left home and studied design in Taipei. Her creations in that period of time are all about home. Yet it was more than being homesick. “Back then in Taipei, I felt hollow inside. That was beyond missing home but feeling very much empty. I didn’t know who I was. How could I say to people who have stereotypes of indigenous: ‘it’s not what you think’”.
 

Lin Lin’s expertise is in graphic design and soft material use, such as felted wool or wire. Her daily concerns are personal experience in cultural context, on micro issues as who she is. She jokingly calls Haung Jin-cheng’s concerns are more world-class issues. His expertise is hard material application as metal. It becomes a common daily exercise on how to work with each other moderately in both soft and hard ways. Lin Lin, who has great imagination, says with smile:” Every time I complete the draft, my husband would grief in pain:’ how are we going to make this?’”   
 
There is no one fixed material she uses in her making. The relationship between her and her material, therefore, profoundly affects the progress of the work. They use a lot of rattan in Brave Man in Taiwan East Coast Land Art Festival 2017. They had no idea how to soak and shape the rattan so they asked the local Amis people and built relationship with them. They tried to soften and bend the bamboo by roasting it while making Djulis in the same year.

Keep ‘playing’ is the necessary path of finding new material application. She describes it “just like being in romantic relationship, it takes time getting know each other.”

Exactly like any relationship, there is a break-in period. Lin Lin doesn’t see it as a problem. She understands that everyone has his own temper as well as insistence for art making. When the creation gets stuck, they would step away from the situation first to walk, eat etc. then continue working after the stalemate is more released.

Since 2009, Lin Lin has been intentionally recording the elders’ collective lives in her village whether it’s through the collection of clothes colors and cultural significances, or the text book making of her mother language. She is trying to piece her own cultural puzzles. Lin Lin has many feelings about the elders’ death as time goes by. Especially when she thinks of her grandmother who passed away last year. Lin gets emotional as remembering the life fragments with her.

“Grandmother is like a piece of land with many children growing on it. When this land stop mentioning her, remembering her, people would forget who she is… If the indigenous sold their land, it would become a number. If we don’t help the land to remember, it would gradually forget what it is.”

She believes that the core value of traditional culture is like a rock, and the social environment changes is like water.

“Water needs to flow so the creatures in it will be able to survive. We need to keep this rock safe and also to respond and adjust to the changes.”  Indigenous people’s community needs to respond to the environment changes but not being washed away its inner core by the torrent of changes. As a backbone of her community, she does not evade the difficulties of all these. “You just have to be that wall.” She says.