- Birth Name: 張恩滿
- Birthplace: Taitung County (Eastern Taiwan)
- Did You Know That …?
- "Fresh Snail (現打蝸牛)” is a live art project created by Chang in 2010, in which she performed the process of cooking snails in a museum. From crushing shells to removing the slippery mucus, Chang showcased a traditional recipe of the aboriginal Paiwan people and re-connected with her childhood memories and the land through the dish.
En Man Chang is a Taiwan artist who explores the interconnectivity between aboriginal tribes and their land through videos, performances, and social practices. Her works have been featured in Taiwan, Thailand, and Canada.
Although she was born to a Han father and Paiwan mother in Taitung, Chang grew up and worked in Taipei. Like many other younger-generation aborigines, Chang was not familiar with her own roots until she embraced her identity as a Paiwan as well as a Taiwanese.
Since 2010, Chang began to visit different indigenous tribes, especially those in eastern Taiwan, to gain a deeper understanding of her hometown and aboriginal cultures.
In 2011, Chang initiated the "A Small House” project in Taitung's Dawu Township to present her imagination of "returning home” in her mother's hometown. The house, which serves as a studio as well as an artwork, reflects Chang's experience of feeling alienated as an artist in the community and the difficulty of resettling at home.
In 2014, Chang created "Decriminalize Shotguns for Aboriginal Peoples” to express the contradictions between aboriginal hunting culture and modern society's desire for gun control through animal skulls, guns, and a documentary.
Through the documentary that followed the lawsuit of aboriginal people's self-manufacturing of guns and a Paiwan man's modification of shotguns, Chang hopes to preserve the dignity of hunters in tribal culture and question Taiwan's legal rigidity towards diverse cultures and traditions. The documentary was featured at the 2014 Taipei Biennial with 51 artists and teams from around the world.
To learn more about the difficulties that indigenous peoples faced in Canada, Chang visited the First Nations, including Unistoten Camp and the community of Musqueam, to interview and talk with the locals and exchange views on ongoing issues in 2016.
During her visit, Chang observed that the aboriginal peoples in both nations faced similar dilemmas and conflicts in balancing economic development with cultural and environmental conservation.
In response, Chang created "As Heavy as a Feather” to present the struggles of Taitung'sFudafudak communityand First Nation peoples in Canada through video, installation, and imagery exploring issues on contemporary aboriginal identity as well as the relations between indigenous communities and their non-indigenous counterparts.
Consisting of oral recordings, performances, installations, and videos, "As Heavy as a Feather” had a successful exhibition in Canada in 2016, evoking dialogues between communities in Taiwan and Canada. This dialogue is very much part of the project, as Chang hopes to use art as a force for transformation.