Refracted Modernity

8. Taiwanese Aboriginal Art and Artifacts: Entangled Images of Colonization and Modernization

8 chia-yu hu Taiwanese Aboriginal Art and Artifacts EntangledImagesofColonization andModernization It is obvious that upon their production, utilization, and transaction, all objects have embedded material attributes and cultural meanings, while as socially and culturally salient entities, objects also construct culturecrossing paths based on material stability and visibility. However, such culture crossing is never “free”; it is always formed by the dynamic views and definitions of cultural boundaries between Self and Others.1 Thus, ways of seeing and representing the artifacts of Others reflect shifting power relations and ideologies in the history of contact. Taiwan is an example of this enactment. In particular, the artifacts of aborigines are a product derived from cross-cultural encounters, for the rise of the category of aboriginal art/artifacts in Taiwan may be taken as a movement towards increasing objectification and differentiation of the “cultural other” through the changing contexts of history. These objects have been assigned values within various systems of meaning from outside. A series of interrelated terms, such as “ethnological specimens,” “material culture of natives,” “aboriginal craft,” “primitive art,” or “ethnic art” have been developed within complex politicoeconomic discourses since the end of the nineteenth century. They have been developed in accordance with the process of applying Westernized colonialism and modernism to Taiwan, which mainly took place under Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945. In such a process, aboriginal artifacts or artworks have been presented as symbols that delineate cultural boundaries and that posit the presumed cultural inferiority of aboriginal Taiwanese. Ratherthanexploringthegeneraltheoreticalframeworkofartandcolonial history, this chapter aims to investigate the material and visual expression of aborigines as a special resource for objectifying cultural sameness or differenceontheislandof Taiwan.Thefocusisplacedontherepresentation 194 | chia-yu hu of aboriginal art/artifacts and objectified images of Taiwanese aborigines in the Japanese colonial period. Since the notion of separating, classifying, and estheticizing aboriginal artifacts as things to be collected, preserved, and displayed refers to assumptions about modernity and primitiveness, the appropriation of aboriginal artifacts as distinctive cultural forms to express differences has highlighted the entangled forces of colonialization and modernization in Taiwan. Therefore, this investigation addresses the colonial context of modernist primitivism in Taiwan. As Nicholas Thomas has proposed, only localized theories and historically specific accounts can provide much insight into the varied articulations of colonial and countercolonial representations and practices.2 Thus, retrieval of the localities and subjects in relation to the historical context is essential to the discussion of colonial and postcolonial sociocultural phenomena in Taiwan. From this perspective, I examine how actual practices have been employed , how objectified aboriginal images were constructed, how artifacts and symbols were selected, and how significant changes in content and meaning evolved in relation to the representation of Taiwanese aborigines. To recapture the dynamic processes of such representation, I first discuss the paradoxical modes for representing aboriginal artifacts and then analyze the systematic classification and scientific knowledge of Taiwanese aborigines developed by the Japanese colonial authority. I then examine various approaches to collecting and appropriating aboriginal objects in Taiwan and investigate the images of Taiwanese aborigines displayed in exhibitions, especially in the international and colonial exhibitions. From these analyses, we can see how appropriated material properties and images of aborigines were used to construct multilayered cultural contrasts. Lastly, I will discuss how contemporary aboriginal art/artifacts as agents linking the past and the present have been used to continuously reconstruct indigenous identities in the postcolonial world. Since ideas of modernity and colonialism have been projected from the multiple perspectives of Euroamericans, Japanese, Chinese immigrants, andaboriginesinTaiwan,thisessayexploresthecomplexandcontradictory processes of colonization and modernization from a dialectical position. If we can rethink the nature of aboriginal art/artifacts and colonial modernity in depth, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the disputed histories and cultural identities in contemporary Taiwan. Appropriating Aboriginal Artifacts in a Modern World In recent years many debates have taken place about the construction of Western identity through oppositional contrast to Others.3 The West’s Taiwanese Aboriginal Art and Artifacts | 195 drive to conquer and exploit Others has been fused with the appropriation of myths, images, or artifacts that projected European speculations and fantasies about Other peoples. Beneath this assumption, different perspectives have inevitably been involved in representing the art/artifacts of other cultures; the fusion of primitivism, modernism, and cultural colonialism are examples of such contradictory elements. Generally speaking, three modes have been popularly applied to represent the artifacts of Others based on the Euroamerican-centric...