Taiwan Etan Pavavalung

AWARDS

2007	Taiwan Indigenous Television / See the original world collection / Second Price 〈Tavadran’s Winding Road〉
2012	Album〈Brothers Who Sing of Love and Longing〉23rd Traditional and Artistic Music Golden Melody Award Best Traditional Music Interpretation Award
2012	Book〈Children of the Land the Sun〉Won the Excellent Art Publication of the 2nd National Elementary and Middle Schools of the National Taiwan Art Education Museum
2012	First Pulima art Award / Preferred / Taiwan
2013	Book 〈The Wild Boar Furu〉Selected for the
2014	AFCC Singapore Children’s Book Festival “Illustrator Gallery”
2018	Book 〈Tawny Fish-Owl and the River〉Selected for the 2018 Bologna Book Fair in Italy
2018	Book 〈Tawny Fish-Owl and the River〉Won the recommendation of excellent extracurricular reading materials for elementary and middle school students of the Ministry of Culture of the Executive Yuan

Etan Pavavalung

Etan Pavavalung is a Paiwanese artist born in Davalan Village, Pingtung County, Taiwan.

Etan’s artworks are multi-dimensional, including poetry, prose, graphic design, painting, illustration for children books, engraving, installation and video work. He is also a documentary film director.  By way of documentaries such as “She with the Patterned Hands”, “Hands that Tell Tales of the Mountains”, “Brothers Who Sing of Love and Longing”, “The Fragrant Mountain Winds”, “Mountain Tribe and Sea Tribe”, Etan tries to create an alternative aboriginal visual aesthetic juxtaposed with a literary poetic perspective.

In his visual artwork, Etan excels at detailed and expressive painting to deliver his literary views and contemporariness.  The innovative visual art form he developed, “Trace Layer Carve Paint”, has been exhibited at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Pingtung Arts Museum.  He takes for inspiration the sustainable ‘trace’ that is hidden in the land, mountains, and nature and the repetitive ‘layers’ of slate houses that constitute the texture of civilization.  He then ‘carves’ out patterns and lines with chisels, and ‘paints’ with the colors that change with the seasons.  His artwork connects with ancient aboriginal wisdom and converses with Christian ecotheology while searching for internal harmony and artistic thinking in rebirth.

Etan’s “Trace Layer Carve Paint”

There is a Paiwan term, vecik, that can be approximately translated to “writing”. Vecik is the root of ve-ne-cik, which in the Paiwan language refers to symbols, embroidery, and engraving, all age-old methods that have been employed by the indigenous peoples of Taiwan to “write”.  Ve-ne-cik proves its cultural vitality through livelihood-related objects such as ornaments and utensils, embroidery on clothing and headdresses, and wood and slate carvings.  Vecik also refers to the eye totem, which often appears on clothing, carvings, and other visual mediums.

After Typhoon Morakot in 2009, Etan felt that the affected Indigenous communities in southern Taiwan needed to create a form of “modern writing” to rebuild everyday tribal aesthetics.  Since the typhoon, “trace, layer, carve and paint” has been the focus of his artistic vision.  It is hoped that the style of “trace, layer, carve, paint” not only presents a new visual art form but more importantly, impacts on the way that we learn to hear the Earth and its breath, the wind, and comprehend vecik in life and aesthetics.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018	Reading Sa-Qati / National Chiao Tung University / Hsingchu Taiwan
2019	Explore / Mozart Gallery / Tokyo Japan
2019	Thinking in Nature / Darwin Visual Art / Darwin Australia

JOINT EXHIBITIONS

2018	pakialalang Decorated road – Pavavaljung Family exhibition / Pingtung Sandimen Township Cultural Center / Pingtung Taiwan
2018	A Beast, a god ,and a line / Kunsthall Trondheim Para Site / Norway
2019	Crossing the Cattle Bull Ditch- Art Festival on the Slope / Silin Forest Park / Pingtung Taiwan
2019	When Kacalisian Culture Meets the Vertical City-Contemporary Art from Greater Sandimen / Pingtung Taiwan
2019	When Kacalisian Culture Meets the Vertical City-Contemporary Art from Greater Sandimen / Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall / Taipei Taiwan
2020	Futurist Wave – Contemporary Art from Greater Sandimen / Pingtung Taiwan

Meeting in that Forest
2017
Wooden boards, prints, acrylic paints
80×240×4cm

I pray that when I wake up
I can touch a sky called innocence

I hope that when it’s dawn
I can ride the wind to discover an earth called eternity

In serenity, there’s breathing of the heart
There lies absolute purity
In tranquility, there’s the gaze of life
There lies the path of the wind

Between the sky and earth we encounter each other
We breathe and dance in their tenderness.