Ihot Sinlay Cihek

Ihot Sinlay Cihek has been working and developing her art in theatre and performance art since 2009 and is now the resident director of In The Adawang Ensemble, a theatre company focusing on indigenous culture. ​Born as a Pangcah from Tafalong tribe in Hualien, Ihot (she/her) is now an active artist in the theatre scene in Taiwan. Holding an MA in Theatre and Drama from National Taiwan University, she has a strong interest in theatre and performance theories, and her works largely focus on the indigenous culture of her mother tribe, and feminism in the modern Taiwanese cultural context. Aiming to explore the aesthetic possibility of performance art, her approaches largely consist of anthropology methods and experiments with spectatorship. For the past years, Ihot has tried to explore her identity as an indigenous woman and the collision between tribal experiences and modern society, especially by practicing performance art - a straightforward bodily present form of “indigenousness”, and by theatrical narratives - playwright, directing, acting, a literary-based way to organize her experience of being a “Flâneuse” between tribes and cities in a modern context.

Photo by Navi Matula-ian