One doesn’t usually think of murals, which are traditionally painted on walls, as being mobile, but a team of Native Hawaiian artists has produced one that’s made to get around.
The six-person ensemble painted “Ku‘u ‘Aina Aloha” (beloved land, beloved country), a 6-by-20-foot mural, in acrylics on canvas — heavy canvas, but far lighter than a wall.
“It rolls up to travel and we also have a (portable) hanging system so it can be installed as a free-standing piece,” said Meleanna Meyer, a member of the mural team. “Murals are a community art form, and ‘Ku‘u ‘Aina Aloha’ is meant for community healing,” she said, explaining that the mural’s mission required that it be able to travel in order to be seen, experienced and discussed by live audiences, including people living in remote places.
And because the canvas is painted on both sides, the installation allows viewers to walk around it and see two very different scenes.
Begun during a retreat at Camp Mokuleia in 2014 and completed last year, the mural has been seen at galleries and schools on Oahu and will appear for a week in the cafeteria at the University of Hawaii Maui College in Kahului. The exhibition opens Monday with a free public event from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and will remain on view through Oct. 3.
The muralists will attend the opening and speak about the project, which includes a feature-length documentary film-in-progress. In addition to Meyer, a filmmaker, they are painters/sculptors Kahi Ching, Solomon Enos, Al Lagunero, Harinani Orme and Carl Pao.
In an age of electronic tablets and digital paintbrushes, the artists are betting that their large mural in tangible color and cloth will arrest viewers’ imaginations and stimulate conversations. “‘Ku‘u ‘Aina Aloha’ is meant to create a pathway of community healing from historical, social, spiritual and environmental trauma,” Meyer said.
The two paintings are strikingly different: One is representational, portraying Native Hawaiian faces in a natural setting in a palette of greens, browns and blues; the other is mostly abstract, with red and ivory jagged shapes evoking breakage and blood.
“There are bones and scarring, universal pain, our ‘Guernica’ of sorts,” Meyer said, referring to Pablo Picasso’s anti-war mural. The figurative painting, she said, is “our moolelo, the best of who we are and how we shape a collective future.” Items used in cultural practices are depicted, including a staff held by a child who wears “an ahuula, a cape of innovations and new ideas.”
While the portraits were mostly done by Enos and Lagunero, “Each artist’s hand touched every part of each painting. That’s why it looks ensemble,” Meyer said when asked about the works’ unforced cohesiveness.
Painting together, she added, “is like being in an orchestra.”
A 3-by-10-foot replica of the mural will tour indigenous peoples conferences in Australia and New Zealand this fall, and be viewed at a human rights commission in Geneva in January. For more information, email meleanna808@hawaii.rr.com.