After spending a portion of her high school years in Honolulu, Hadley Nunes left Hawaii for the New York art world. Now, via the PRESENT Project, she’s brought internationally known artists to Oahu.
A group of five artists began work on installations inside two cavernous warehouse spaces on Cooke Street in early September. Simultaneously, PRESENT launched the NEST program for youth, coordinated by New York artist/educator Bryan Welch.
Inspired by the way birds build shelter from natural materials, the youths worked with bamboo and guava cut from nearby hillsides, cloth and dye brewed on premises, along with other materials, to create structures within the warehouse space. Their NEST and the other installations will be unveiled Wednesday.
"We’re here developing something that will go on much longer than this month,"Nunes said. "These kids — how is this going to change them?"
Nunes says Honolulu can easily be a hub for art. Think Miami, home of the sprawling, influential Art Basel art fair. PRESENT is Nunes’ first effort to prove it.
She’s a believer in art as a trigger for building local community and engagement with global forces.
Nunes, a Kalani grad, connected with the visiting artists via artists’ residencies similar to the one now underway in Honolulu. They come from the Big Island (Sally Lundburg and Keith Tallett), Miami (Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez), New York (Swoon)and France (Florence Carbonne).
DE JESUS Rodriguez, an experimental filmmaker and installation artist, is a veteran mentor of youth art programs. Her vision is to inspire young artists to learn new skills as they plan and collaborate.
From personal experience, she is an expert in creative tenacity despite changing circumstance and environments. Born in Cuba (she proudly relates that her grandparents were born in Cuba’s native huts, or bohio), she is sensitized to issues of transplantation, segregation, exile and the persistence of culture.
Her Honolulu installation, "migrants," incorporates elements of the bohio. It includes rooted plants and greenery, glass and mirrors inside a "laboratory" that tests, projects and reflects the idea of the transplanted species.
"We’re growing paradise," she said. If there’s irony in her statement, it’s in the eye of the beholder.
The artists’ installations can be an attraction — a gift to the community, de Jesus Rodriguez said. They can then attract more onlookers, art collectors, art-loving residents.
"That’s what we achieved in Miami,"she said.
Swoon, born Caledonia Curry, is an ambitious artist who divides her energy between large-scale drawings and installations, public projects and studio work.
On Aug. 10 she was the subject of an admiring feature by The New York Times, "Life of Wonderment," remarking on her "far-flung activism" and growth from street artist to one who fills the Brooklyn Museum with her works — and admirers.
Swoon gained widespread attention for her 2009 project, "The Swimming Cities of Serenissima," a phalanx of boats made out of trash, on top of which she and a crew of friends sailed, uninvited, into the Venice Biennale.
In Honolulu she has created a large print based on her work in Haiti. It will be available for purchase to support PRESENT Project and her own public-service projects.
Carbonne’s work is deceptively simple — using plastic, pigments and line, her work defines space and creates impressions. Waving in the wind, a translucent panel of plastic seems to takes the shape of a wave, capturing the eye, while light flowing through colored panels she’s layered over windows plays over passers-by. Her work has been compared to "ghostly islands" –delightful, mysterious built environments.
Tallett and Lundburg were inspired by the idea of emergency shelter, as well as Honolulu development and structures in Kakaako.
"Storms are metaphors for the smaller crisis that go unnoticed every day, all around us," they said in a statement.
As for NEST, Welch says openness, playfulness and an appetite for discovery keep the young artists-in-training engaged.
Welch was in Haiti earlier this year, working with that country’s youth on programs in a newly built community center, spearheaded by Swoon.
"What’s exciting about this for me is that kids get the opportunity to work on something on a large scale," Welch said.
Thinking big is common to all the artists involved.
If successful, Nunes envisions the PRESENTProject as an annual gathering of artists.
"What art brings to society can take a greater place in our value system," she said.
