Artist
Kulele, a Paiwan artist from the Ma-er Village, Sandimen Township, has been passionate about creating arts since childhood. After serving in the military for a decade, he has become a determined and devoted artist. Sprouted as a self-taught, he followed the Paiwan master artist Sakuliu in conceptualization and techniques as his path as a sculpturer was initiated. As a multi-talented artist, Kulele works with conventional materials such as wood and stone and mixed media, including recycled scrap metal. He looks for used car parts and hardware in mechanic’s garages. He turns them into arts, bringing out the total flexibility and malleability of the cold and stiff metal bones with his unique and streamlined shapes.
Ever since he started his artistic journey, Kulele has a keen affinity with the East Coast. Back when the Taiwan Indigenous folk arts started raising awareness as one of the contemporary art forms, he met Rahic Talif. He is a pioneer artist who returned to the Gangkou Village in the 1990s to draw nutrients from the mother culture. Kulele met other indigenous artists of similar ages. They have returned to the villages on the East Coast, such as Siki, Iming, and Tafong.
The unique, diverse, inclusive, and liberal artistic climate of the East Coast is very attractive to Kulele, not to mention that he has made so many like-minded and mutually beneficial friends over here. Therefore. he has been moving back and forth between Sandimen, the homeland where he can never leave, and the
East Coast, the place he loves. His arts also combines both the tribal folk arts of the profound subtleness of the mountain slope and the linear fluidity of the ocean waves.
Artwork
Title: The Traveler’s Eyes
Artist: Tapiwulan Kulele
Material: Steel
Dimensions: 800 CM Long, 400 CM Wide, 250 CM High
Location: Jailulan, Northern Meadow
Kulele’s creation “The Traveler’s Eyes” for the “Mountains Harmonize Ocean Songs- East Coast Land Arts Festival 2021” is located in Jialulan Recreational Area, overlooking the breathtaking scenery of the Dulan Bay embracing the Dulan Mountain. For Kulele, the eyes are passages for one’s inner soul to the outside world. The beauty of the East Coast landscape is both visually magnificent and spiritually powerful, capable of cleansing our souls. He hopes that through these travelers’ eyes, sculpted from recycled steel bars, viewers who stop by the border of mountain and sea can review their coexisting relationship with nature.
Thousands of years…
Countless days turning into nights, seasons changing…
By the mountains and the sea, humans coexist with everything in nature
The fertile earth carries the joy from birthing innumerable lives
and quietly accompanies their return to the dusty dirt and flowing currents
The years have cultivated the majestic beauty of the East Coast… nurturing and sustaining the Austronesian cultures
All passengers of every journey are struck by her beauty
The flow and change of life
Here we are stopping… hesitating…gazing…envisioning
Encounters embracing with our hearts and souls… are deeply hidden in every eye-contact
Leaving the impression of beauty and praise to reminisce
