The golden luster of life
Labay, who says that she has recently found her feet in life, declares with a hearty laugh: “I have come to realize that the big issue of identity—ethnic or otherwise—only leads you to learn to identify with yourself. If you can identify with yourself, then all those contingencies in life will no longer trouble you.”
Being pregnant conferred a sense of fulfillment; she felt as if her life shone “with a golden luster.” Since her pregnancy, her art has been characterized by an abundance of golden lines and rounded contours.
A prominent example is An Exhausted Mother, a sizeable work made up of three major components and exhibited at the Taoyuan City Indigenous Culture Center this year. For this project, Labay created metal frames and prepared ready-made objects such as round tables and a wok, wrapping each of them in handwoven textiles. She then assembled the whole into the shape of a mother. The round tables symbolize the mother’s breasts, while the hand on one of them represents a baby wanting to suckle. Labay says laughingly that the pair of scissors nearby alludes to the mother’s hope that her child will soon be weaned.
Although childcare occupies much of the artist’s time, An Exhausted Mother exudes bliss. Also this year, Labay exhibited another work, entitled Family, at Good Eats, a food shop and art space in Hualien’s Fenglin Township. The background of Family is an enormous piece of fabric woven by Labay while she was staying with her husband in Italy. Lines of various hues—dark green, jasper, and olive—are interspersed with red ocher, evoking the ambience of an olive grove at dusk. The golden objects hanging on the tapestry and resting on the floor symbolize Labay’s family. The airplane and the dinosaur refer to her first son; the camera tripod to her husband (a film director); and the stones to her second son, whose Italian name means “stone.” Labay portrays herself as a pot pouring out drops of water, as though she sees herself as a wellspring of life.
Labay is now a fulltime mother and artist, often up to her ears in work. She self-deprecatingly refers to herself as an absent-minded mother. While taking care of her children, she also has to contemplate her creative projects, so that she may work on them whenever she has a moment.
Undoubtedly, art is an intimate experience for Labay. She withdraws to her studio in the village to pursue her projects alone. Situated on her father’s land, and surrounded by lemon and cherry trees, the studio is closely bound up with Labay’s life. There she busies herself with weaving, as if she has returned to where she started, bravely confronting all of life’s challenges on her own.
For Labay, motherhood confers a new perspective on life, dispelling the darkness that characterized her earlier work. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
Joining forces with other female weavers, Labay created a gigantic work of installation art—Elug Tminun (“woven path”)—for Xincheng Taroko railway station.
Labay’s weaving equipment once belonged to her grandmother.
More than simply inheriting a traditional indigenous craft, Labay reflects on her life through weaving.