Seventh tribe, 2025
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7:09s
The Seventh Tribe is my response to the lost memories of my hometown, and an attempt to rebuild history and identity through fiction. This land was the playground of my childhood—fruit trees, fish ponds, a military dependents' village, and the farm my grandmother worked. It held three generations of my family's life. But when I went back three years ago, what greeted me was a vast, cold sea of solar panels.
The name "Seventh Tribe" comes from the military unit my grandfather served in. He came to Taiwan with the army and was stationed here. At the time, the government encouraged marriages between Han Chinese and Indigenous people, and that's how my Paiwan grandmother came down from the mountains to marry him. This piece of land witnessed my family's blending, migration, and everyday life—it's also where my own sense of identity began. Now, that history has been erased by a landscape that's supposed to symbolize "progress." So I started making work in response to this forgotten story of the land.
Facing this kind of change, I kept thinking about how to reconnect land and memory. I wanted to build a surreal world where the solar panels are personified—breathing, moving, gathering. They become beings with emotions: partying at night, kneeling during the day, refusing sunlight, even thirsting for rain. They stand at the wrong angles, unable to absorb any light at all. These postures reflect a kind of oppression and unease, mirroring the confusion and absurdity I felt about what had happened to my hometown—and also pushing back against the myth of "green energy."
The military village, the Indigenous community, the veterans, and the land all overlap in complicated ways. That makes me both someone who carries this history forward and someone who has watched it break apart. I use the way solar panels repeat and act as a collective to turn them into a silent "new tribe"—a fictional stand-in for the old tribe that's been erased. By recreating these losses and ruptures, I'm trying to let viewers feel the emotional disconnection I went through, and to rebuild it in a way that isn't a single, neat narrative. Through the weaving of fiction and reality, I'm proposing a kind of reclamation of personal memory.
In this world, these cold devices start to breathe, the silent land speaks again, and the line between the virtual and the real is deliberately blurred. Through this work, I'm not just responding to my own experience—I'm hoping to create a space for dialogue, inviting viewers to think about what land means, what energy costs, and what memory is worth. When the price of "energy benefits" is the disappearance of culture and history, can we really embrace it without question? When symbols and reality blur into virtual images, can we still tell which parts of the world actually belong to us?
The Seventh Tribe is a mourning for the past, and a quiet but firm act of resistance. I'm summoning back the things that once belonged to us, in virtual form—giving them life, letting them be reborn in another world, so they can speak with us and ask, together: after everything is lost, what's left for us to keep?
interview archive, 2025
It was once a lush, green farmland filledwith orchards, trees, fish ponds, plazas,and the precious heritage of militarydependents' villages. It was where mygrandmother raised and lived with me,a place that served as the most joyfulplayground of my childhood and mymost cherished haven of purity.
The picture shows the current landscape of my hometown.
Three years ago, the entire landscape changed when I returned to my hometown after being away foryears. The vibrant, life-filled farmland I remembered had turned into a barren wasteland, now litteredwith strange objects—solar panels. Looking at the land that had become unrecognizable, I knew nothingabout it. So, I embarked on a journey to uncover what had transpired. Along the way, I recordedeverything, piecing together the story of my hometown.
"The Seventh Tribe" is my hometown's name and a militarydependents' village.
It originates from my grandfather, a soldier who migratedto Taiwan around the 1950s. At that time, my grandfatherbelonged to the Seventh Unit and was assigned to thesame area. The government granted them the right tomanage and use this piece of land, which is why the villagewas named "The Seventh Tribe." Later, my grandfathermarried my grandmother. The government encouraged intermarriage between Han Chinese and Indigenous peopleat the time, and all of my grandmother's sisters alsomarried soldiers. My grandmother moved from hermountain tribe to the plains to live with my grandfather inthe Seventh Tribe, and this continued through my motherand then to me.
My hometown has many historical buildings, including themilitary barracks, activity centre, and assembly groundsfrom that time. My grandmother also planted many plantson this land, and as children, we would often play on thefarm. These are all important memories for me and myfamily, especially of my grandmother.
Three years ago, the government suddenly reclaimed thisland, removed all the buildings, and even imposed unfairdemands on us. They then constructed an entire field ofsolar panels, leasing it to local corporations. Since then, thishistory and these memories have vanished as if they never existed.