"I want visitors to see how much we love our land, how we take care of our land, what our land means to us," says Solomon Enos, seen above with "Aloha Mai, Aloha Aku."
For as long as visitors have been coming to Hawaii, whether by ship or plane, the Islands have been marketed. Almost everyone has seen the beautiful Polynesian idylls rendered on tourism posters from the 1920s through the 1970s—from the White Ship era to the age of aviation—beckoning the world-weary to a mostly imaginal paradise. Even by the middle of the twentieth century, when jet aircraft collapsed a weeks-long overseas journey to a mere few hours, the imagery used by tourism boards and ad agencies to lure visitors to Hawaii wasn't always the most authentic or tasteful, featuring scantily clad brown-skinned women and improbably bulbous, ripe fruit (much of it introduced to Hawaii). These were meant for the outsider's eye, reveries in which Island people existed mainly to fulfill a traveler's escapist fantasies.
The perspective was very outsider looking in, and "in" often resembled a theme park, with treasures and experiences there for the buying. Much has changed since those days, including a greater understanding of and respect for Island and Native culture, along with a vigorous dedication to restoring, protecting and perpetuating what makes Hawaii special.
In honor of Hawaiian Airlines' ninety-fifth anniversary, we asked three renowned Island artists—Kamea Hadar, Shar Tuiasoa and Solomon Enos—to put their own spin on those early travel posters. What would they portray to the visitors coming to their home? How would they want to be seen? How do they see themselves and Hawaii, these small, isolated islands at the nexus of global culture and at the intersection of tradition and modernity? The results of those questions grace the three different covers for this special anniversary issue of Hana Hou!
Kamea Hadar details "Wayfinding," modeled on his wife, who is of mixed ancestry. "The mixing of these cultures is what's beautiful about Hawaii," he says. "There aren't many other places in the world with such cool hybrids as here."
Kamea Hadar
Kamea Hadar's home studio is more intimate than you'd expect from someone who works on huge canvases. A multimedia artist from Oahu and co-lead director of POW! WOW! Worldwide—a global network of artists, events and festivals that began in Honolulu—Hadar's gorgeous murals and work have serious scale. His rendering of President Obama's dignified visage covers the side of an apartment complex on Ward Avenue. Olympic gold medalists Duke Kahanamoku and Carissa Moore grace the side of an entire high-rise on South King Street.
"I really like this juxtaposition," Kamea says, pointing to two separate illustrations of the foreground and background that he's painted on wood and that he'll later combine to make the final image. "The background has a lot of the stuff inspired by the old advertisements. A lot of those ads were very much how the West or the Mainland viewed Hawaii, right? Like, even the way that they're surfing on top of the wave, the positioning of the surfer—that's not really how it is, but that's how Mainland artists depicted surfing in Hawaii.
"I don't think that's necessarily bad—it's just a different way to look at things, a different kind of lens that Hawaii was viewed through. But in the foreground here, I painted an intentionally more modern-looking Hawaii girl based on my wife, who is hapa [mixed race], like me. That's what most of us here in Hawaii are: a mix. People used to joke with me or other hapa kids and call them 'poi dogs,' meaning mutts. I would counter that with a joke and say, 'I'm not a mutt, I'm a hybrid.' The mixing of these cultures is what's beautiful about Hawaii, you know? There aren't many other places in the world with such cool hybrids as here. But the woman in the foreground—she's a modern Hawaiian woman with the past behind her, both metaphorically and physically. Some of her garb is muumuu-ish—maybe it's new or maybe it's old. And then the lei poo [head lei]—that's something that I really love, because it's very traditional yet still around in our culture today.
"The colors are very much an ode to the past and those old advertisements. I like the fact that there's this old propeller plane in the background," a reference to the Douglas DC-3s that Hawaiian Airlines flew beginning in 1941, the first major upgrade of its fleet, "yet the woman is kind of looking towards the viewer, looking towards the future, right? There are things behind her, and there are things in front of her."
"And that canoe?" I ask, pointing to the corner of the painting, where the distinctive crab-claw sail of a traditional Polynesian waa (canoe) peeks over the horizon.
"Yes, that's an ancient vehicle that Hawaiians used to use to navigate—just like now we use planes, right? Hawaiian Airlines, it's a carrier of culture. In some ways the airlines transformed us from being isolated from the global culture into a hub. So now we're the center point of all of these different cultures that are coming together, creating these hybrids, and we're not isolated from the world anymore."
"Reshaping how we want to tell the story of Hawaii is an interesting opportunity," says Shar Tuiasoa (a.k.a., Punky Aloha), seen above in her studio. "I want to reshape that narrative in a way that still feels very joyful and welcoming ... I love us so much. I love our people. I love this place, and I want to share that joy." The title of her painting, "Kilo" translates as "stargazer," "seer" and "to observe."
Shar Tuiasoa
A light mist paints the air, guided by the brushstroke of a passing trade wind while I search for Shar Tuiasoa in the Manoa Marketplace. A Polynesian artist, designer and muralist from Kailua, Oahu, Shar is also the author-illustrator of the popular children's book Punky Aloha. I finally find her behind the Safeway, where she's working on a large mural. She descends to meet me, almost celestially, in a cherry picker wearing a high-visibility work vest.
Her cover image, a Hawaiian wahine (woman) half submerged in the ocean of the Windward side of Oahu, the dramatic green curtain of the Koolau Mountains behind, is her wry way of overturning the outsider gaze, characteristic of the early tourism posters. "In the past, travel posters have romanticized our culture, but not in a very responsible way. You'd see us portrayed as servants or wearing little coconut shell bras, and oh, here's a plate of fruit for you, you know? As a young girl I didn't feel a connection to them—it almost felt like I was looking at a Barbie doll. Like, who's that and where's she from? But I was able to analyze it and think more critically as I got older and I poured myself into the art world. You see some of those old posters now, and they're pretty cringe," she chuckles.
How does Shar approach those stories and de-cringe the imagery? "Reshaping how we want to tell the story of Hawaii is a cool opportunity. You want to tread a little bit lightly, but it's good to ask myself, 'What do I want people to consider when they think of Hawaii or the Pacific Islands in general? How am I going to tell that story in a less extractive or exploitative way, a way that shares what we deem to be a responsible way for us to live? I want to reshape that narrative in a way that still feels very joyful and welcoming. I don't want to put people off, because I love us so much. I love our people. I love this place, and I want to share that joy with people. I think that joy comes from a more authentic storytelling side, and to me that's celebrating the people who care for the land, our cultures and also the beautiful melting pot of cultures that we have here. So the focus, for me, is on our value system—the way that we prioritize our aina, or our land, and celebrate the people who care for it.
"A lot of that is changing the dynamic of the conversation, which has historically been very exploitative—about people coming here and seeing what they can take from us. People come and treat our home like a theme park sometimes. They leave their opala [trash] everywhere. They drive around like we don't have regular lives. They move here for two years at a time and leave, and we're just left to pick up the pieces, which is detrimental to the Native population being able to stay here.
"On the other hand, I've met so many people who come and are just so keen on wanting to know what they can do to help. They're not coming to take from us; they want to give. They'll ask me, 'Where can we volunteer? Where can we spend our money? Where is a more appropriate place for us to put our dollars that will actually help Native Hawaiians and locals?' For the conversation to change into that has been huge."
"Aesthetically, can we expect something ... colorful from you?" I ask her, the two of us gazing up at the psychedelic lime-green background shade she'd decided on for the mural that she admitted made a senior citizen passing by ask, 'You sure about that?'"
Shar pulls out her phone and shows me her illustration for the cover, nearly finished but not yet colored in.
"I wanted to focus on the idea of regenerative tourism," she says. "For me, that looks like a healthy environment. So, this woman in the water represents Hawaii. She's gazing upon the visitors (maybe keeping a watchful eye) inviting them to not just view our islands as we do but to also care for them as we do. She is leading by example. She's surrounded by really healthy underwater life—limu [seaweed] and fish, and behind her are the Koolau. I really wanted to include the Koolau in my vision to make it feel like home for me. These reciprocal systems in our environment—aina feeding aina—that's where those rain clouds come in. That circular relationship from the sky to the land to the ocean: That's what I wanted to represent. And hopefully, visitors can appreciate that balance and beauty in a responsible way.
"Oh, and you can expect bright colors, for sure. I gotta put my Punky Aloha twist on it, right?"
Solomon Enos, "Aloha Mai, Aloha Aku"
Kamea Hadar, "Wayfinding"
Shar Tuiasoa, "Kilo"
Solomon Enos
I just miss meeting Solomon Enos in person by one day. The Honolulu-based Native Hawaiian artist-in-residence at the Capitol Modern (formerly the Hawaii State Art Museum) left for Montreal, where he had a solo show while simultaneously participating in an Indigenous and African Futures group art exhibition. But Solomon is more present and alive over a video call than a lot of people are IRL; he's instantly extroverted, refreshingly honest, enthusiastic and authentic.
"The scene I painted is from an area of Waikiki, possibly a little bit upland from where the Ala Wai is now," Solomon says, pointing to different parts of his cover illustration on the screen. "The work aesthetically brings together Art Deco and Post-Impressionistic styles, which span the nascent age of flight as captured here. The warm, late afternoon palette that is then cooled by the light of a full moon at twilight reflects a dance of sapphire and amber accents. All of this framed by a recurring, echo-like ripple, giving the work a kind of structure, like a trellis in a garden."
Which is appropriate, Solomon says, because "this is a vision of gardens, or mala. This is probably a romanticized view because I don't know whether there was that much agriculture going on in the 1950s in that area. So, I'm dialing up some of the romanticism"—a quality not unknown in the early tourism posters—"but the kind of romanticism I want to focus on in this scene is this whole family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, and everybody's working. There are about eight or ten figures in the scene, so it's almost like a tableau. But what they're saying in this story is, 'No matter how much Hawaii changes, we'll keep thriving.'
"Basically, I want visitors to see how much we love our land, how we take care of our land, what our land means to us," he continues, eyes alight, his mana practically reaching through the screen. "If we're feeding ourselves off our own land and teaching others the way our land likes to be treated, then that's an amazing win-win situation. That's what I'm hoping to try to capture in this painting."
I point to the airplane, an allusion to the two eight-seat Sikorsky S-38 amphibious biplanes that Hawaiian Airlines (then known as Inter-Island Airways) started out with in 1929, with service between Honolulu and Hilo. How does that fit into the tableau?
"The airplane relates to the idea that Hawaiians are navigators. We're wayfinders. There might not be more islands to find, but there's a better world to find, and I think that's the next navigation. It has to be, for us as humans. It also represents that an airplane carries aloha around the world: If the world can come to Hawaii, then Hawaii can also go out to the world. So, that's kind of flipping the narrative in a way to say, 'We're going to be stronger. We're going to thrive globally, and we're going to bring some good energy to the world again.'
"Maybe the message is cheesy," Solomon says with characteristic humility, "but it's like what Elvis Costello said: 'What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?' And frankly, if I look like a dummy for standing up on the table and saying, 'You know what? We need way more aloha in this world,' then I'm happy to put on the dunce cap.
"So while the image is supposed to emulate a 1930s poster for Hawaii, I'm doing a little bit of a bait and switch in the best possible sense. To me, the topless hula dancers—that's a weed. I want to pull that out and instead plant an idea that if people come to Hawaii and find peace, they'll take peace home with them. Peace is a completely renewable resource, right?
"So if you like contentment and happiness, when you come here you can still attain it, but you don't have to break this place to get it. Everybody knows what it's like to have tourists come to where you live and make any-kine, right? In Hawaii we just happen to see that way up close, and we happen to have that in major volume relative to land.
"In other words, we're a small place. We get plenny people already here and plenny people who would like to be here. So being able to create a narrative of malama aina, to take care of this land—that's what I want to spread."
