HAWAI‘I — Since mid-February, Honolulu’s metropolis corridor has hosted Meleanna Aluli Meyer’s “‘Umeke Lā‘au: Culture Medicine.” The sculpture, which enlarges the curving form of a calabash to room-sized proportions, holds its own within the airy space. An opening allows people to enter, and inside, an audio track speaks the names of 38,000 people who signed an 1897 petition opposing Hawai‘i’s annexation by america. As well as, the sculpture was designed to host small gatherings, an invite that has been taken up by teams together with Mongolian shamans, leaders of Honolulu’s police division, and descendants of these 1897 petitioners.
“‘Umeke Lā‘au” thus claims space within a seat of governmental power while critiquing that government’s historic legitimacy. But, as its subtitle suggests, the work bends towards therapeutic. Accompanying texts clarify protocols for utilizing the area and be aware Hawaiian practices imbued within the piece, together with the symbolic incorporation of the pewa, a fishtail-shaped patch, usually manufactured from wooden, used to restore and strengthen valued picket objects. That spirit was echoed in a gap ceremony that introduced collectively the artist, mayor, cultural practitioners, and colleagues from many artwork worlds (and maybe additionally passersby drawn by the artwork or the heart-shaped musubi supplied as an area spin on Valentine’s Day treats). All have been welcomed to expertise this formidable sculpture, which fused conventional Hawaiian values, supplies, and types with public sculpture and social apply.
Jane Jin Kaisen, “Halmang” (2023), single-channel video with stereo sound (element), set up view at East Hawai‘i Cultural Center, March 2025
“‘Umeke Lā‘au”speaks to the strengths of its host exhibition, the 2025 Hawai‘i Triennial ALOHA NŌ. Like the triennial overall, none of the elements are particularly radical. Yet the alchemy of art and place feels bracing — beautifully out of step with a climate of restricted speech alongside the current federal push toward glibly celebratory art rather than nuanced responses to the nation’s historical past, current, or futures.
Whereas centered on Honolulu and O‘ahu, ALOHA NŌ extended to Maui and Hawai‘i Island — a first for the triennial and its organizer, art nonprofit Hawai‘i Contemporary. This iteration spanned 14 sites, ranging from large institutions like the Honolulu Museum of Art to the tiny Aupuni Space to public parks; many venues closed on May 4, but a number of others remain open.
ALOHA NŌ’s successes mirror the curatorial group’s globally knowledgeable but deeply place-based method. The title set issues up with its addition of “nō” to “aloha.” Curators Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Binna Choi, and Noelle M.Ok.Y. Kahanu included that small phrase — an intensifier in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) — to lightly but firmly detach “aloha” from its globally familiar, debased touristic uses and reassert its grounded strength and call for active care of land, water, and each other. English homonyms add other layers: “no” is a refusal of easy stereotypes and inattention, while “know” is a prompt to learn and to engage. The triennial, and these intersecting ideas, asserted Hawaiʻi’s relevance to this sociopolitical second partly by situating the archipelago inside a world context that emphasised connections throughout the Pacific, each with different islands and amongst locations engaged in decolonial and environmental struggles.
Rocky KaʻiouliokahihikoloʻEhu Jensen, “Ipu Naho‘okelewa‘a” (c. Nineties), koa from wooden used to construct Hawai‘i Loa, set up view at East Hawai‘i Cultural Middle, March 2025
Element of Rocky KaʻiouliokahihikoloʻEhu Jensen, “Ipu Naho‘okelewa‘a”
This approach began with the first curatorial meeting in December 2022, when Kahanu, Choi, and Al-Khudhairi literally grounded their work by tending kalo (taro, a traditional staple crop). They began the process of getting to know each other by joining a workday at the agroecology nonprofit Kākoʻo ʻŌiwi, one of many places where visitors and locals alike can give back to Hawai‘i. That could have been an empty performative gesture, or an earnest action that led nowhere productive. Instead it charted a path of generous critical engagement, open curiosity, and deep work that was buoyed by many colleagues in the area and drew particular inspiration from the work of Manulani Aluli Meyer. Her teachings on Hawaiian epistemology helped anchor the curators’ dedication to aloha nō as a apply, not only a title. They weren’t afraid to dig into richly muddy conditions and assist artists who do the identical.
The exhibition additionally showcased the trio’s ability in shaping satisfying experiential and conceptual hyperlinks amongst diversified websites and artworks. At instances successfully didactic, at instances sublimely sudden, ALOHA NŌ featured numerous types of art-making by 49 artists and collectives and gave works area to breathe on their very own and to play collectively throughout the exhibition. There have been extra robust initiatives than I can cowl right here, and since that is one in every of a number of current responses to the triennial, I’ve targeted on venues which have obtained much less consideration and/or the place interrelations between artwork and website felt significantly vivid.
ALOHA NŌ, set up view at Hō‘ikeākea Gallery at Leeward Community College, March 2025. Foreground: Megan Cope, “Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (Off-Country) Kaulana ‘Ōlepe,” detail (2025); background: Russell Sunabe, “Something Mighty” (2025).
For instance, the context of the East Hawai‘i Cultural Center — in Hilo on Hawai‘i Island, a coastal town achingly close to the elemental power of both fire and water — enhanced several standout pieces including Lieko Shiga’s Rasen Kaigan (Spiral Shore), a collection of darkly exuberant, near-hallucinatory pictures of a Japanese city earlier than and after the 2011 tsunami; Jane Jin Kaisen’s absorbing video “Halmang,” on feminine deep-sea divers performing a shamanistic ritual at Jeju Island in South Korea; and Rocky KaʻiouliokahihikoloʻEhu Jensen’s “Ipu Naho‘okelewa‘a,” a carved wooden sculpture of a navigational compass held by two figures — one of which is strengthened by pewa.
The Hō‘ikeākea Gallery at Leeward Community College is near another significant location: Pu‘uloa (Pearl Harbor). The works shown here evoked crosscurrents and solidarities among waters and lands in Hawaiʻi, Korea, and Australia that have been reshaped by colonial occupation and/or military presence. The presentation was anchored by Tiare Ribeaux’s documentary “Waters of Pu‘uloa” on the positioning’s plentiful previous, fraught historical past, and work to revive its waters by Native Hawaiian practices. The ensemble additionally included Russell Sunabe’s pretty work of regional creatures, similar to a strong shark and a tiny seabird, one other video from Kaisen’s collection of works filmed on Jeju Island, and “Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (Off-Country) Kaulana ‘Ōlepe,” a multi-part work by Megan Cope. The latter created an important hyperlink between the gallery and an adjoining terrace overlooking Pu‘uloa, the place Cope put in a collection of sculptures manufactured from wooden, wire, and oyster shells. This expands upon comparable sculptures she made to foster wholesome marine habitats in her native Quandamooka waters; these will finally be re-sited to allow them to do the identical in an area loko i‘a (fishpond).
Megan Cope, “Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (Off-Nation) Kaulana ‘Ōlepe,” detail (2025); oyster shells, mangrove, stainless steel wire
Acknowledging the realty that most visitors won’t make it to each website, the curators represented many artists with a number of works inside and throughout venues. One instance stands out specifically: “Aloha Ka‘apuni/Revolutionary Aloha,” a commissioned body of work from Hawai‘i’s present poet laureate, Brandy Nālani McDougall. A number of places all through O‘ahu and Maui included concrete poems whose stanzas explore layered meanings of ka‘apuni, which interpretive materials define as: “‘to make a tour, go around, surround, encircle, rotate, revolve, travel; circuit,’ in addition to ‘revolution, revolving.’” McDougall prolonged her consideration of ka‘apuni to four interventions in small parks around the base of the iconic crater Lē‘ahi (Diamond Head), as part of a collaboration with the new Honolulu public art initiative Wahi Pana (Storied Places). At each site, one reads the land through McDougall’s phrases on glass panels, together with depictions of conventional fishhooks that allude to the ‘ahi of the crater’s Hawaiian identify. These transient texts unearth and re-inscribe Hawaiian historical past and sensibilities onto this well-known place, providing a lens each new and previous that challenges others’ claims to personal the land, its tales, and its identify.
The curatorial trio’s deliberate, consensual, place-based course of parallels different current approaches to equally scaled exhibitions. Whereas not revolutionary, their method yielded a powerfully resonant triennial. Maybe this pertains to McDougall’s use of ka‘apuni: circulating, transferring by a set of steps, directing power towards issues that must be seen and spoken. And it highlighted a useful gizmo: the pewa — that patch utilized in Hawaiian woodworking. In its work for the triennial, graphic design agency Welcome Stranger integrated the pewa into the diacritical line above the “o” in ALOHA NŌ. There, it provides an insistent reminder to hunt artistic methods to hyperlink custom and the current second, to attach throughout distinction, to place energetic care into the issues one values, and to work towards restore with the fierce and compassionate spirit of aloha nō, with out making an attempt to reduce the problem or cover the cracks.
ALOHA NŌ, set up view at HT25 Hub at Davies Pacific Middle, February 2025. Left: Brandy Nālani McDougall, “Lē‘ahi” from Aloha Kaʻapuni/Revolutionary Aloha.
Russell “Sunabe, Something Mighty,” element (2025), oil on canvas
Brandy Nālani McDougall,“Lē‘ahi” from Aloha Kaʻapuni/Revolutionary Aloha, element (2025), concrete poem. ALOHA NŌ + Wahi Pana, set up view, Makalei Seaside Park, March 2025.
Element of Meleanna Aluli Meyer, “‘Umeke Lā‘au: Culture Medicine”
ALOHA NŌ, set up view at East Hawai‘i Cultural Middle, March 2025. Foreground: Rocky KaʻiouliokahihikoloʻEhu Jensen, “Ipu Naho‘okelewa‘a”; background: Lieko Shiga, “Rasen Kaigan (Spiral Shore).”
The 2025 Hawai‘i Triennial ALOHA NŌ continues at choose venues by Might 31, June 6, June 28, and past; particulars are on the web site. The triennial was curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Binna Choi, and Noelle M.Ok.Y. Kahanu.
