Biung Ismahasan, Indigenous Relational Space and Performance: Curating Together Towards Sovereignty in Taiwan and Beyond

Biung Ismahasan 

Biung Ismahasan presents for 4A Digital: recent research and curatorial practice, focusing on “Indigenous Relational Space and Performance: Curating Together Towards Sovereignty in Taiwan and Beyond.”

Biung Ismahasan is a Bunun (one of Taiwan’s sixteen Indigenous Nations) curator, artist and researcher. He is a PhD candidate in Curating from Centre for Curatorial Studies at the University of Essex in the UK. His thesis entitles “Indigenous Relational Space and Performance: Curating Together Towards Sovereignty in Taiwan and Beyond.”

His research relates to contemporary Indigenous curatorial practice and aesthetics, focusing on Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art. Ismahasan emphasises issues of participation, performativity and the historiography of Indigenous curation and exhibition design. He has received a MA in Cultural Policy, Relations & Diplomacy from the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. His most notable curatorial projects include Dispossessions: An Indigenous Performative Encounter 20142019, an international performance art exchange of Indigenous artists from Taiwan. He was a curatorial assistant of Let The River Flow: The Sovereign Will And The Making of A New Worldliness in April 2018 at Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo; he has curated Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art in May 2018 at Goldsmiths; he had curated yearly theme-based exhibition Ngahis Routes: When Depth Become Experiment which have collaborated with seven Taiwanese Indigenous artists at the Taoyuan City Indigenous Cultural Centre in 2019; he recently curated the Rukai Nation installation artist Eleng Luluans Between Dream in Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel at the second exhibition in the National Gallery of Canadas series of presentations of contemporary international Indigenous art between November 2019 and October 2020.

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This 4A Digital commission has been supported by the Cultural Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Sydney.