Let art bloom
Since the completion of their building project in October 2019, Elug has organized workshops on rattan weaving and bow loom weaving in their traditional house. There, experienced villagers teach participants how to prepare yellow rattan palm canes and use them to make racks for draining dishes, drying cloth, or displaying decorative objects. In this way, the ancestral skills of the Truku people can be kept alive. The bow loom weaving workshops take place in the winter. A fire is built inside the house. The attendees are taught to bend bamboo stems into a bow shape to hold warp threads in tension. On these bow looms, they set about weaving colorful bands of cloth. The whole setting—the weaving and the studious looks—seem to belong to a bygone age. It feels as if the house has come to life.
Elug also organizes Phpah, a festival that attracts artists and craftspeople to the village. In the Truku language, phpah means “flower.” Dondon has given it a more poetic inflection: “blossoming life.” By inviting creative practitioners to the village, Elug seeks to endow traditional culture with a new relevance.
At the inaugural Phpah festival in 2019, Gao-Deng Lichuan, an artist who works with metal and stone, collaborated with a bladesmith in Dowmung, using marble to create highly distinctive cutlery. Zheng Zhiting, a specialist in natural dyes, teamed up with Dowmung’s women to create fabric dyed with catechu and persimmon, making smock-like coats and mufflers inspired by traditional clothing. When she first saw Dowmung, Zheng was deeply moved by the view of the village in the lap of the mountains. She turned her impressions of the flora in the surrounding woodlands into woven patterns. Wearing these patterns, she imagined herself being cradled by the mountains, just like Dowmung.
Indigenous artists Idas Losin, Temu Basaw, and Labay Eyong took up residential fellowships in Dowmung, where they were inspired to create three works of land art: Naissance, Eight Hills, and Sun-Drying. Temu, who joined Dondon at Elug upon finishing university, drew creative sustenance from his life in Dowmung. Using metal threads to make eight “hills,” he wanted them to look as if they were pulled up out of the ground. “That which is raised from the land is abundant in its nature. In the context of Dowmung, our workshop, our land, and our way of life are all characterized by abundance. So being pulled out of the land confers a sparkling feeling, although this also comes with blood,” Temu says.
The youngsters at Elug learned from village elders to build this old-style house in Dowmung. (photo by Jimmy Lin)