Stories in art
Hiiakaikapoliopele: Visual Stories by Contemporary Native Hawaiian Artists / The epic tale of Hiiakaikapoliopele, beloved younger sister of Pele, has been told and chanted many times, woven into the fabric of Hawaiian history, and treated as an honored source of inspiration for hula. It was given comprehensive written form by Hooulumahiehie and serialized in a Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nai Aupuni in 1905-06. As part of an ongoing commitment to foster Hawaiian knowledge, Awaiaulu Press, founded in 2004 by Dwayne Nakila Steele and directed by noted scholar Puakea Nogelmeier, selected Ka Moolelo O Hiiakaikapoliopele as its first publication in 2007. The bilingual edition includes Nogelmeier’s own translation, accompanied by illustrations created by native Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos.
This text served as the sourcebook for 11 artists, including Enos, who were invited by curator Neida Bangerter to create work for Maui Arts & Cultural Center in the fall of 2009. A selection of work from that exhibition, Hiiakaikapoliopele: Visual Stories by Contemporary Native Hawaiian Artists is now installed at the Hawaii State Art Museum (HiSAM) through July 17. It is worth recounting the “genealogy” of this exhibition, as it serves as a significant example of the knowledge projects undertaken to sustain the work of reanimating indigenous history and culture. The story of Hiiaka, a true odyssey, recounts her travels as she meets a challenge to reclaim Pele’s dream lover, Lohiauipo, lord of Kauai. Hiiaka, garbed with a magic skirt of ferns and accompanied by a retinue, including her companion Wahineomao, travels the length of the island chain, only to discover that Lohiau has perished and his spirit has been captured by cliff-dwelling moo women. Hiiaka successfully scales the cliff and battles the moo, restores Lohiau to life, and escorts him back to Kilauea, meeting great trials and tests of her powers along her journey. Love and lust, jealousy and sibling rivalry, the natural and the supernatural, light and dark sides of both the human and the spirit world–this spellbinding story has it all. Faced with the opportunity, and the challenge, to tell this story in visual form, the invited artists, using a variety of media, selected passages of the tale as focal points for their work–not illustrations per se (that had already been brilliantly done by Enos)–but what might be considered their own imaginings, given material form.
Mark Chai, known for his elegant and inventive use of reclaimed materials, employs recycled plastic and wood to create “Hiiaka’s Skirt Becomes a Surfboard for Lohiau” and “Hea aku i ka makani (Call to the Winds),” a massive stylized whirlwind at the center of the exhibition. Both works employ interlocking sections with Chai’s signature form reminiscent of a fiddlehead fern. The encounter with the moo (lizard) women, as one of the most dramatic moments, provided the point of departure for several artists: Enos created three sculptures of the moo, each quite terrifying despite their small scale; Hoaka Delos Reyes offered his own vision of Pilioeikapua, one of the moo, carved as she emerges, baring her shark-like teeth, from a lava rock. Mikioi Wichman has taken a more lyric approach in a wall-sized screenprint installation, “Ka mea lanakila,” that identifies Hiiaka as the ultimate victor–initially seen as a lush array of ferns, one must look carefully to discover the shadow of the moo lurking beneath.
Printmaker Abigail Romanchak’s diptych “He ‘Iwa ke Aloha E Hoomao Ao Nei” combines multiple images of the ‘iwa bird in one panel, and the Hawaiian text of the title and its English translation (“Love is like the ‘iwa bird soaring out of sight”) in the other. The print seems to invoke the fated nature of love between goddesses and human beings.
Contrasting materials, traditional and contemporary, also enliven this exhibition–Pualani Lincoln Maielua’s kapa panels and Carl F. K. Pao’s large acrylic and pencil drawings both provide bold graphic statements. Marques Hanalei Marzan alludes to Hiiaka’s companion “Wahineomao” in delicate garment-like constructions of naau puaa (pig gut), while Maikai Tubbs recreates the cloud of butterfly spirits they encountered on their journey in the forest of the demigod Mahiki–transforming clear plastic utensils into these elusive, ethereal creatures.
Sculptor and painter Puni Kukahiko and printmaker Matthew Kawika Ortiz also contributed to this exhibition, which serves as a wonderful reminder that great stories bear retelling; that it is, indeed, the retelling that keeps them and their community alive; and that inviting new generations to participate in that retelling is essential to the continuity of culture.
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