A Dream Dancing in the Sunlight extends from a series of earlier works centred on the solar panel fields that have replaced much of the land in my hometown.

 

Three years ago, I returned to my hometown in Taiwan to find that the farmland where my grandmother once raised me — orchards, fish ponds, the village square — had been cleared and replaced by an entire field of solar panels. The land I knew became unreadable overnight.

 

This work takes the solar panel and rebuilds it using traditional Paiwan materials: wood, fabric, rope, dye, chain, and bell. The grid structure remains, but its surface no longer absorbs sunlight for energy. It carries weave, colour, and the small sound of bells.

 

Woven into the work is also a story my grandmother once told me — of festivals where the people of the tribe gathered in the square in front of their homes, wearing traditional clothing, holding ceremonies and weddings, dancing under the open sky. I never lived that scene myself. But I place it, imagined, into a landscape that has now been completely transformed. The work becomes a quiet contrast between two everydays: the one she remembers, and the one that has replaced it.