Our Souls are Fighting at All Time

深夜，Siki仍在都蘭糖廠工作室雕作隔天要送給友人的木雕黑熊。 Photo by 鄒欣寧

“If one died in an alien land, he would pray to ancestral souls for a pair of wings to bring him home.” Siki Sufin’s most well-known work, ‘The Vanishing Age Hierarchy’ (2011), is carved by chain saw. It displays a veteran who covers his face with lower cap.

If you look closer, you’ll find his head is full of carving marks but no face. His hands are disproportionately huge, as if he wanted to pull viewers to another world. Siki says “Wings gently lift up veterans’ bodies. They have lost consciousness and directions; therefore, they have no faces.”

Amis people say “I want to see your body” when they think of someone. Missing is not an abstract idea for them. When they long for someone, they are thinking about a tangible existence. These thoughts will guide peoples’ bodies home even with no faces.

The engulfed Amis soldiers in history slot

工作室旁的展間正在展出Siki歷年的木雕作品，包括他最著名的《消失的年齡階層》。老兵和翅膀是他創作恆常的主題。 Photo by 鄒欣寧
Photo by 鄒欣寧
Photo by 鄒欣寧
Photo by 鄒欣寧

The lifting of martial law was proclaimed in 1987. Siki’s granduncle returned from China to Dulan, Taitung that year. He looks like Amis but sounds like Chinese. This perfectly mandarin speaking but unfamiliar elder’s life intrigues Siki’s curiosity.

Siki complements the part of Taiwan history that being intentionally left out in school books through his artworks about these forgotten people.

“Landed in Shanghai in 1946, these young soldiers walked north to Xuzhou. It happened to be Chinese New Year period. At all the sudden, senior officers confiscated all the bullets from Taiwanese but not the guns. No one knew the reason. Later on, the news of February 28 incident was spread out. Some deserted the army and the ones who didn’t lost their lives in battle fields.”

These vanishing faces between 1942 to 1953 had been washed out by history over and over again. They are Japanese soldiers, Kuomintang army and People’s Liberation army. Some of them fought for both, even wore all of three uniforms. Amis people had been engulfed in the history which is not recognized by Taiwan, Japan nor China.

Siki, as an artist, cuts the slot of history and records it with his works. This series has yet to finish after ten years. The next phase of Siki’s work will be tombstoning the passed Amis soldiers’ history.

Siki歷來的大型木雕作品散置於展場內。 Photo by 鄒欣寧

The bridging generation stuck in the middle of tradition and modernity

Siki returned to home village at age 25 and changed his job from template worker to woodcarving artist. He tells tribal dilemmas and records the myths passed on by words of mouth in his works of ‘Amis Dancers’ (1994) and ‘The Giant Salau and Little Kelpie’ (2000). Because “our generation is the bridge between the last and the next generations”, he says.

If the bridge is not strong enough, it could break too.

“When one can’t get what he is looking for in modern life and in games, he would be stuck in the middle. He would lose the tradition also the modernity. Some people go back to the tradition, they are confident; some stay in the modern, a different path. But the most of people stuck in the middle so they lost in alcohol. They don’t have future.” He pauses and says “I feel I am stuck too.”

Face off against time and life with carving

Siki says that his best work is ‘Defending Force’ (2002) which used to be exhibited at Hongye Hot Spring Riverside Park in Bunun village. This eight-meter tall iron feather installation is inspired by a Bunun myth of shooting the sun.

In the story, there is no day or night for the sun never falls. Bunun people suffer from it tremendously. Two brothers volunteer to shoot the sun down. They reach the closest mountain, but their shooting arrows are all melt by the heat of the sun. When they are nonplussed over this problem, a bird with red beak says to them: “Take my life. Apply my blood on the tip of arrow and use my feather as your arrow tail. Then you will shoot the sun down.” Two brothers follow the suggestion, make a new arrow by the bird’s feather and blood. With this arrow, they shoot the sun down successfully. There are day and night since. They become sun-shooting heroes.

But for Siki, “This bird is not being acclaimed and acknowledged. The true hero should not be the brothers but the bird who dedicates its body and soul to this event.”

Veterans who don’t know for whom they fight, and a sacred bird that sacrifices its life for Bunun people. Siki portrays all sorts of battles in his works. “Life is an invisible war. Despite no bloody scenes, our souls are battling at all times.”

Siki has regular life in recent years. In addition to making art, he has to take his two young children to and from school every day. He also has to punch in and out making big profitable furniture. This artist who concerns and devotes his body and soul to his people also sustains pressure of providing his family. Siki’s latest series of works are about Taiwanese black bears. He confesses that it’s not only because they are getting fewer and in difficult situation as indigenous people are, but also because they are adorable, highly popular in the market. “Life is a war” he says.