Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the changing of aesthetics of Indigenous Taiwanese products allows for the culture of these ethnic minorities to be re-evaluated following a stereotyping process imposed upon them by global systems of mass production.

Paper long abstract:

Within the context of globalisation, cross-cultural exchanges are now commonplace thanks to trade, immigration and tourism. At the same time, these factors have also standardised and homogenised cultural products, endangering specific material productions belonging to minority ethnic identities. According to Appadurai (1986), the meaning and value of objects can change in space and in time, a concept poignant in contemporary Taiwan, where the traditional utensils, handicrafts and technologies of the Indigenous tribes have been threatened by global influences and have changed their obsolete functions to fit modern purposes and aesthetics. From a practical subsistence perspective, these items are now "actively used in social and individual self- creation" (Olsen, 2003: 91) by the Indigenous groups and "have the ability to tell multiple stories" (Gosselain, 2000: 189) by becoming tools of self-representation, illustrating the deep bonds between these cultures and their land and natural environment. In 2011, the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung (TW) held the exhibition Form, Colour, Pattern, and Texture: A microscopic journey through the living aesthetics of Taiwan's indigenous peoples, promoting the aesthetic reconsideration of Taiwanese Indigenous art, which has been stereotyped and vulgarised by the mass production of Aboriginal souvenirs in touristic areas. This paper examines how Taiwanese Aborigines are once again finding pride and prestige in their previously undervalued material cultures through new aesthetic forms; creating products that can "represent the culture and heritage of the tourist destination" (Hume, 2013:5) and making possible an "exchange of experience and information and emotional response" (Hume, 2013:8).