Draft:Dou Yi-Jen

Dou Yi-Jen (Chinese: 豆宜臻; Dòu yí zhēn; Saisiyat: hewen atain tawtawazay) was born in 1993 in Nanzhuang township, Miaoli county. Her father is a Saisiyat aborigine and her mother is from Hakka. She graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of Arts (also known as TNUA). So far, she won three awards with her individual and collaborative artworks which focus on tracing the past of Saisiyat and the reappearance of traditional cultures. She is good at creating art by different methods, including photographing, documenting and making good use of digital resources.

Personal Life
She was born in 1993 in Nanzhuang township, Miaoli county. Her father is a Saisiyat aborigine and her mother is from Hakka. Despite her family background, her parents seldom talked about their tribe. Therefore, when she was little, she had little connection with her family’s culture.

She left her hometown and moved to northern Taiwan to study in the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University(also known as HSNU). In 2017, she graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. She kept studying at the Graduate Institute of Trans-disciplinary Arts. However, it was this year that her father had a serious illness, she found out that she didn't know anything about her father’s tribe. Therefore, she decided to be the reconnect between her and her aborigine identity.

Career
In 2014, she began historical review and field investigations, wanting to find her identity of aboriginal and the cultural values.

In 2017, she planned these exhibitions: One day of Shaoxing Community (Chinese: 一日紹興：紹興社區文史回顧展) in Taipei and Matsu Village sixty-years (Chinese:離散．六〇: 馬祖新村主題展) in Taoyuan. In the year of 2018, she won the first prize in the Taoyuan Contemporary Art Award for her collaborative artwork Micro-Ruins Project 2017 (Chinese: 麥可盧因斯計畫 2017) with Yi-Ching Chien. Later, in 2019, she got the Next Art Tainan Award for her Micro-Ruins Project (Chinese: 麥可盧因斯計畫).

She got the Grand Prize of Visual Art in the 5th Pulima Art Award in 2020 for her work Crossing Mountains (Chinese: 越山; Saisayat: lohizaw). She traced back by foot to the old path that her ancestors had moved in to avoid oppression, hoping to know more about her tribe. In it, we can see the work of thirty creators and each of them with their interpretations of the same paths.

Art Techniques
The main idea of her works focuses on tracing back the past and the reappearance of traditional cultures. She completed her artwork Crossing Mountain by spending nearly half a year climbing mountains to find the past of her tribe. Her action was commented on by Kao, Jun-Honn, the Adjunct Assistant Professor at TNUA, as “heartfelt”.

She uses abundant media to express the concept, such as sketches, photos, and displays of historical objects. Besides, she often holds collaborative exhibitions with other artists, such as Yi-Ching Chien, Yi-Chun Chen, and Yun-Ting Hong.

Artworks
Basically, the artworks of Dou Yi-Jen are mostly concrete and realistic, tending to make good use of space and digital resources.

For example, the Micro-Ruins Project draws materials from communities facing demolition due to urban renewal. The collected, discarded materials are used to construct a space, leading viewers to recall and imagine the scene back then. Other artworks includes Looking Back, a Place of Gathering (Chinese: 回望，相約之地; Saisayat: kaSpalawan), Crossing Mountains and Riverside Meeting (Chinese: 河邊會議 ; Saisayat: ‘a’iyalahoe).

Looking Back, a Place of Gathering aims to piece together the historical story of the creator’s family and even her ethnic group by building traditional buildings and drawing migration maps. While looking back and sorting herself up, she also evokes the deep memories of the elderly.

Riverside Meeting is presented in digital images and old documents from. It records the tribe's routine preparatory meeting before the Saiya tribe's biennial, sacred and solemn Basta Pass (dwarf festival) is held.

Crossing Mountains is made by constantly overlapping and correcting the oral dictation of the elderly. With the experience of walking and visiting,  the artists plotted a road to the memory of the past. This work won the first prize of 2020 Pulima Art Award Visual Arts.

Exhibitions
Between 2014 and 2015, most of the exhibitions she participated in were held by her alma maters, HSNU and TNUA. In 2014, she participated in the exhibitions held by the Department of Fine Arts and won the high distinction award.

Later, she engaged in more and more cultural, environmental and historical art exhibitions, with the themes she devoted herself to. For example, in 2016, the new generation arts, which is an exhibition related to environmental protection, aimed at awakening people’s consciousness of purifying mountain forest.

After 2016, Dou Yi-Jen started to be the curator and person in charge of the exhibitions. In 2017, she curated One Day in Shaoxing: A Retrospective Exhibition of Shaoxing Community Culture and History in Taipei and ''Dispersion. Sixty: Matsu New Village Theme Exhibition'' in Zhongli. In 2021, pa’inrowa’ flip – the return of Saixia’s youth (Chinese: 翻轉——賽夏青年的迴返; Saisayat: ’pa’inrowa’), the display she curated, was one of the most iconic. She gathered Saisiyat artists from different tribes, inviting them to share how they reconnected to their hometown after entering the workforce.

Till now, she is still actively holding and participating in either solo or group exhibitions. One of the latest ones she participated in is the display, Glory of Mighty Mountains: Ridges between Awe and Respect (Chinese: 嶾嶙的岳光：在敬與畏的稜線間).