Lauren Hana Chai captures search in ‘Last Known Locations’

“Last Known Locations,” a visually arresting and heart-wrenching exhibition by Honolulu-born painter Lauren Hana Chai, launches a quarterly series of art displays at the Kakaako co-working space Impact Hub.

The exhibit, the culmination of Chai’s residency at Impact Hub, runs through May 26.

It began as a visual expression of Chai’s search to find her mother, who disappeared suddenly when Chai was 11 and remains missing to this day.

After her parents’ divorce, Chai and her mother had remained in touch through letters; one day, the letters simply stopped.

The paintings “are really a continuation of the letters,” Chai says. What began as a project in art school became a personal mission to uncover her mother in art, if not real life.

After consulting a private investigator, Chai determined six of the most likely locations where her mother might be. She began to paint each of the cities, sometimes overlaying these depictions with images, including watchful eyes, the artist and her mother or the artist and her father, waiting for her mother to return.

Chai first exhibited these works in San Francisco, one of the last known locations where her mother lived, and plans to bring them to each of the six cities she has painted.

THE PIECES are dreamlike; amid the hustle and bustle of each city, it’s as if Chai sees her mother superimposed everywhere.

“To Mira, Love always, Hana” is broadcast in many of the paintings; written on billboards, and in lights.

“I know that it had to be something really terrible that would make her leave — if I was her, I would feel ashamed or embarrassed that I had left,” the artist said. “Now, I wish I could tell her that I won’t judge her. Honestly, I just want to give her a hug.”

Halfway through the show, her face and her mother’s blend together in a triptych. “This work has really been a process of self-discovery,” Chai said. “I’ve been finding out about myself through painting her.”

Her journey of self-investigation leads us into passionate paintings that strive to unpack being a Korean woman in a Westernized, patriarchal world.

The work is presented in a chronological fashion, so visitors literally walk through what Hana describes as her “healing process,” beginning with the darkest days and emerging into a world of color, compassion and global consciousness.

“I used to only paint dark things, in black and white,” she said. “Now, I love bright colors.”

IN HER later work, Chai connects her pain over her mother’s disappearance to larger Korean and feminist struggles.

Chai is inspired by the Korean idea of “han,” which she describes as a cultural “overwhelming sense of oppression and injustice and unresolved pain. It is cultural in Koreans through the long history of being occupied and then divided.”

The paintings depict visceral themes of pain, sexual exploitation and power imbalances, with deep cultural symbolism.

The crowning piece is a permanent wall mural inspired by Hawaii’s intersecting cultures. It’s crowded with imagery — intentionally so, Chai writes, so that viewers will be forced to “take their time to view each element.”

While most gallery shows are fleeting, this mural will remain in the space as a permanent impression of Chai’s work, and it’s the latest addition to a collection of art donated by local artists.

THE QUARTERLY exhibitions at Impact Hub are the product of a partnership with organizers of the Honolulu Biennial to feature artists at the space. “We were surprised and amazed by how many artists were interested and wanted to exhibit here just to have a place to show their work,” Impact Hub’s Meeta Vu said

The positive response from artists is testament to what Vu and Chai see as a great need for support and resources for young, emerging artists. “Coming from San Francisco, there’s art everywhere,” says Chai. “I want to help bring that to Hawaii.”

Artists work in collaboration with Vu to create a permanent art piece for Impact Hub; in exchange, they receive free use of studio space, business development mentorship, a gallery exhibition and the chance to sell their work out of the Hub.

Beyond her show, Chai aims to grow Pena People, a public arts collective she co-founded with Lauren Okumoto, named for the Hawaiian word pena, to paint. Their next project is to create sculptures from ocean trash in collaboration with Impact Hub. Her evolving personal work continues to investigate feminism, Asian-American identity and the clash between Eastern and Western ideals in occasionally chaotic, striking color.

Meanwhile, the search for her mother goes on.

“Originally, I did this show to find her,” Chai said. “But it’s also a process of letting her go.”