Melissa Chiu Highlights Local Artists in the Hawai’i Triennial 2022

Announced today, the full list of participating artists includes Ai Weiwei, Theaster Gates, Sun Xun, and Liu Xiaodong. But which Hawaiian artists is curator Melissa Chiu most excited to show?

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Hawai'i Contemporary today announced the full list of 43 artists and collectives participating in the inaugural Hawai'i Triennial (HT22), which takes place in Honolulu from 18 February to 8 May 2022.

Among the biggest names are Theaster Gates, Mika Tajima, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Chinese artists Sun Xun, Liu Xiaodong, Xu Bing, and Ai Weiwei.

Ai, who designed face masks to help raise funds for the Triennial, will present a new iteration of his sculpture, Tree (2009–ongoing). He creates the works using the dead, dry branches, roots, and trunks of numerous tree species.

Entitled Pacific Century – E Ho'omau no Moananuiākea, the exhibition is curated by Melissa Chiu, the Australian-born director of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Chiu is supported by associate curators Miwako Tezuka and Drew Kahu'āina Broderick.

Artists with at least one foot in Hawai'i include photographer Ed Greevy and art duo Toqa, whose work is pictured top.

Asked to introduce some of the local artists she's most excited to show, Chiu said, 'Immediately, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio comes to mind. I'm overjoyed to have the respected poet, scholar and activist in our presence with her contribution of a spoken word performance.'

Heolimeleikalani Osorio's poem 'Kumulipo' was performed at the White House's inaugural Poetry Jam in 2009.

'Her work continues to inspire and promote justice for Hawaii's native population,' Chiu said.

'Along with Jamaica,' she continued, 'I'm looking forward to seeing the work of artist Lawrence Seward, who will be producing and printing newspapers to be distributed across venues. His work is supposed to make a critique of tourism and exploitation.'

Hawai'i's tourism industry is certainly freighted with politics — they form much of the drama of Mike White's hit TV series The White Lotus (2021) — but the islands offer any number of ways for artists and curators to frame conversations. They are both a strategic territory and a remote paradise, an asterisk that connects Taipei and Tahiti, Sydney and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Lima.

'When I was preparing for this project, I continued to return to the idea of Hawai'i as a point of axis between the U.S. and Asia, both in its topography and cultural history,' said Chiu, who served as the Museum Director of the Asia Society prior to her role at the Hirshhorn.

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Exhibitions

Chiu has previously described our current era as 'the Pacific Century'.

'To that effect, HT22 is intended to introduce more of that idea of centralising Hawaiʻi and the Asia-Pacific, rather than replicating past interpretations through a centre-periphery analysis,' she said.

Within this context, the Hawai'i Triennial will examine themes of history, social justice, environmental concerns, indigenous culture and the legacies of colonialism.

The Hawai'i Triennial began as the Honolulu Biennial in 2017. The organisers announced the switch to a triennial format in 2020.

Works in HT22 will be shown at seven exhibition venues on O'ahu: Bishop Museum, Foster Botanical Garden, 'Iolani Palace, Hawai'i State Art Museum, Hawai'i Theatre Center, Honolulu Museum of Art, and Royal Hawaiian Center. —[O]

HT22 Participating Artists & Collectives

'Ai Pōhaku Press (Maile Meyer and Barbara Pope)
Ai Weiwei
Richard Bell
Herman Pi'ikea Clark
Eating in Public
'Elepaio Press (Richard Hamasaki and Mark Hamasaki)
Chitra Ganesh
Theaster Gates
Ed Greevy and Haunani-Kay Trask
Masanori Handa
Tsuyoshi Hisakado
Ai Iwane
Michael Joo
Karrabing Film Collective
Izumi Kato
Yuree Kensaku
Sung Hwan Kim
Liu Xiaodong
Dan Taulapapa McMullin
目[mé]
Miao Ying
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Nā Maka o ka 'Āina (Joan Lander and Puhipau)
Leeroy New
Shinro Ohtake
Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio & Jonathan Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio
Pacific Sisters
Piliāmo'o (Mark Hamasaki and Kapulani Landgraf)
Ahilapalapa Rands
Lawrence Seward
Athena Robles and Anna Stein (Double A Projects)
Jennifer Steinkamp
Sun Xun
Mika Tajima
Momoyo Torimitsu
TOQA (Isabel Sicat and Aiala)
Tropic Editions
Gaku Tsutaja
Ming Wong
Xu Bing
Chikako Yamashiro
Justine Youssef
Zheng Bo