Description: Hānau Ka Moʻolelo Roundtable Discussion is an in-person gathering at the Donkey Mill which brings together a multidisciplinary panel of historians, cultural practitioners and artists whose work involves gathering, interpreting and sharing moʻolelo. This program will feature storytelling by panelists who will also share insights into their process and what goes into their work of listening, remembering and amplifying. This event is free and open to the public.
This discussion will be moderated by Halena Kapuni-Reynolds and feature exhibiting artists Melissa Chimera, Nainoa Rosehill, and Hannah Kihalani Springer.
To encourage further discussion following this roundtable, lunch will be provided to all attendees. It will be recorded in high-quality audio and video, and later posted to the Donkey Mill YouTube channel.
About the Speakers: Born and raised in Hawai‘i, Melissa Chimera is a conservationist whose work consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. She studied natural resources management at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and has worked in Pacific Island land stewardship and environmental education since 1996. Her solo and curatorial exhibitions include Remittance (Above the Equator Gallery, 2022), Migrant (Honolulu Museum of Art, 2019) and The Far Shore: Navigating Homelands (Arab American National Museum, 2018). Other projects include Inheritance, Land and Spirit for the Sharjah Biennial 9, United Arab Emirates and the University of Hawai‘i podcast Land & People which investigates Pacific Islanders’ relationship with land. Chimera has exhibited throughout the U.S., Asia and the Middle East. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award. In 2022, she was Anchorage Museum’s artist-in-residence and University of Toledo’s Mikhail Endowment grantee for her work concerning immigrant narratives. Her work resides in the collections of the Arab American National Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Hawai‘i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts. Chimera keeps a studio on Hawai‘i Island where she lives with her son and husband.
Nainoa Rosehill is an artist born and raised on Hawaiʻi Island working predominantly in oil painting and photography. His work pursues resonance and meaning in the groundless, crumbling, and anxious contemporary world through the rigor of craft and the submission to revelation. His work speaks on the resonance of paradox affirmed in the wake of our crumbling certainties and a re–enchantment with fulfillment beyond our unreachable, unknowable, disorder of others. It communicates our exile from meaning, responding to the divine irreducibility inherent in the very notion of possibility; a theology of ecstatic tension; an ode to bonds.
Hannah Kihalani Springer is a Hawaiian scholar, communicator, environmentalist, storyteller and educator on indigenous Hawaiian culture and advocate for the protection of the Hawaiian environment. She is an author of Kōkua aku, kōkua mai: an indigenous consensus-driven and place-based approach to community led dry land restoration and stewardship, which details the forced relocation of many Indigenous people of the Hawaiian land, coupled with the disruption of the natural ecology. Springer has worked with multiple outlets to publish stories of Hawaii, including through the Kona Historical Society, the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority's Kūkulu Ola—Living Hawaiian Culture Program, and joined multiple podcasts, including Ka Leo o ka Uluau and Land and People.
Halena Kapuni-Reynolds (Kanaka ʻŌiwi/Native Hawaiian) is the Associate Curator of Native Hawaiian History and Culture at the National Museum of the American Indian. He was born on the island of Hawaiʻi and raised in the Hawaiian Home Land community of Keaukaha in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Halena graduated from the department of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Spring of 2024 after defending his dissertation titled Kuʻu Home O Keaukaha: He Lei Moʻolelo No Ka ʻĀina Aloha (My Home, Keaukaha: A Lei Of Stories For Beloved Lands). His project tells the story of Keaukaha before and soon after the establishment of a Hawaiian Home Land community, and envisions what a cultural center might look like for the community. Halena also holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo and an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Denver. His research interests center around Hawaiian history and culture, Indigenous museology, and public history.
Featured artwork by Nainoa Rosehill, Ka waiwai (detail), 2024
About the Exhibition: Hānau Ka Moʻolelo focuses on the transformative power of moʻolelo and presents these stories, traditions, histories and remembrances as evidence of collective and individual experiences and unfolding memories. Filled with kaona and layered meanings, artworks become the vehicle through which moʻolelo manifest–artists thoughtfully revealing stories and histories they have witnessed, researched, and/or remembered.
IMPORTANT DATES
- Exhibition on View: September 28 - December 14
- Opening Reception: Saturday, September 28 from 5:00 - 7:00pm
- Young Artist Residency: Pass It On – Intergenerational Learning and Legacy Building Through Art, by application only
- ʻAʻohe Lua e Like Aku Ai: Moʻolelo with Kumu Keala Ching: Saturday, November 2 from 5:00 - 7:00pm
Mahalo Nui Loa: This exhibition and programming are made possible by support from The Hiroaki Elaine & Lawrence Kono Foundation, Hōlualoa Inn, the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund of Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and our community of individual donors.
