Of Thread and Stone│306│Stories of Weaving

Script of this episode// The final story begins in the era of American aid. The old photo in the venue shows the distribution process of supplies, whereas the photographer didn’t shoot the scene of a rattan basket on the back of an indigenous girl. Rattan baskets were often used as containers of American aid supplies. The sweaters sent to tribes were also unraveled into thread, since for Truku women, only blankets woven with their own hands, called “qabang” in the Truku language, are assets with social value. The fabric the artist Labay Eyong inherits from her grandmother is exactly the continuation of the memory. The rattan objects displayed in the venue are not merely tools for the Amis people. Rattan craft is traditionally a skill exclusive for men, and when elders pass away, rattan items in production are usually left unfinished. The semi-finished rattan basket in the exhibition venue, called “fakar” in the Amis language, was passed on to the artist Akac Orat by a tribal elder’s partner after his death, in hopes that the rattan basket would be completed one day. It also signifies that the craft still awaits being passed down. These woven and braided items connect life, laboring, and culture. They show us that every thread and every object in our hands holds memories and histories of ethnic groups. ----------------------------------------------------- Of Thread and Stone ｜Curator｜TSOU Ting, WANG Han-fang ｜Artists｜Jam WU, Kieren KARRITPUL, Forensic Architecture, CHIU Chen-hung, KAO Ya-ting, CHEONG See-min, Akac Orat, Slavs and Tatars, HUANG Po-chih, Rayyane TABET、jiandyin、Nii Nami