whitney Biennial 2026 (installation View)
This work comes from a few places. The starting point for the paintings comes from the lūheʻe, a lure made with a leho (cowrie shell) to catch heʻe (octopus). There is no lūheʻe in any of the paintings, but they are all thinking about lures: methods of attraction, visual trickery of another thinking being, hypnosis, craftsmanship in order to trap, standing out and blending in. They are weighted, maybe my way of tying these wispy lofty ideas down to something.
The sculptures come from somewhere else. Their location of origin can be found on their identification tags, here are a few: Kapapapuhi (west loch golf course), Kālia (hilton hawaiian village), Kahakupōhaku (joint base pearl harbor-hickam).
These materials have been rescued and crafted into doorstops, in hope of realigning their trajectory towards a future open to a little bit of restructuring.
