Dondon Hounwn (b 1985) (with Temu Basaw, Pilaw Uraw, Tumun Buru)

About the artist

Dondon Houmwn is a musician, performer and artist from the indigenous tribe of Truku. To help revive the disappearing Truku culture, customs and language, Houmwm presents contemporary aboriginal culture through music and performance art. In 2014, he won the first prize in the Pulima Art Awards for his cultural and artistic initiative. When Houmwm was a student, he used to be a trainee at the Formosa Aboriginal Singing and Dance Troupe (原舞者). After finishing high school, he joined U-Theatre (優人神鼓) to learn drumming and meditation and toured with the group. With the belief that culture and art are the accumulation of ancestral life and collective experience, Houmwm returned to his hometown Dowmung tribe in 2009 to learn about the history, story and mythology of his ancestors and their land, which all have become his sources of inspiration. Houmwm presents aboriginal culture by incorporating traditional instruments such as mouth harp with contemporary music. To share more stories of Taiwan’s aboriginal people, Houmwm founded the “Eiug Art Creation Group (兒路藝術創作工寮),” in which “Eiug” means “road” in the Truku language, to express his hope of tracing and passing down aboriginal heritage and tradition. Houmwm leads the group members, who are mainly university students, back to their tribes to reconnect with their roots and mythology by playing traditional instruments, singing folk songs, and dancing.

Work being shown at ATM

Name: Along the Path to Gaia Hagay is Present (2025)

Location: The Holden Gallery

Media: Ritual objects, sculptural installation, wool yarn, performance

Description: The performance project blurs the boundaries of life and art within the Indigenous culture, drawing on the Truku genesis myth of Hagay, a queer deity who creates the world, and extending to collective practices by four Indigenous artists from different Taiwanese tribes. Through weaving, ritual, music, dance and embodied practices, the work enacts a process of transvaluation, overturning normative values and reconfiguring the symbolic and social conditions of indigeneity. In doing so, it regenerates cultural memory, reclaims Indigenous presence and affirms tribal life as a living practice of being at home, where belonging is both renewed and continually reimagined.