Nau Ka Wae (The Choice Belongs to You): Recent Work by Kaili Chun
HENRY R. LUCE GALLERY JUNE 23-JULY 30
Sculptor and conceptual artist Kaili Chun is the ninth recipient of the prestigious Catharine E. B. Cox Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts. After completing her education at Kamehameha Schools, Chun earned her baccalaureate degree in Architecture at Princeton University in 1986. In 1999 she earned her MFA from the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, Chun’s work, known for its visual and physical strength and refinement, as well as for its conceptual sophistication, has come to be rooted in two sustaining principles: the value of a continual cycle of learning, and the importance of universal truths that transcend the boundaries of time and culture.
The value of learning in both formal and informal settings, using traditional as well as non-traditional or more contemporary methods, has a direct impact on the artist’s ability to keep her mind open to the world in which she lives. The fluid continuity of inquiry and knowledge creates an environment for work that values the lessons of the past as building blocks for the future, while also accepting the changes that may be part of that process.
The second foundation of Chun’s work is manifested in her belief in certain guiding and enduring principles. These are grounded in the cultivation of personal character and values, things learned from one’s parents, from one’s küpuna. Such knowledge comes not only from immediate familial guidance, but from the collective wisdom of a community deeply-rooted in time and space. Chun’s work is thus informed by a sense of creative lineage, one that places her within a matrix of native Hawaiian history and culture that has found increasingly powerful expression in her work. The binding force of that matrix is genealogy, the intricate network of linkages that affirms the interconnectedness of all aspects of life–past, present and future–in a fully animate world, created and creating.
Nau Ka Wae (The Choice Belongs to You), Chun’s installation created by the artist as the recipient of the Catharine E. B. Cox Award for 2006, requires viewers to enter the space, and become contained within it, activating its imperative of choice as they define their own pathways in and through the space. Nau Ka Wae becomes a sanctuary, a place of reflection and meditation resonant with the signs of both indigenous belief and Christian faith.
Within the overall installation each form occupies a position of significance, and is rich with multi-faceted references and meanings. In the center is a large, triangular boulder, named lele or jumping-off place by Chun. The shape of the lele may connote the holy trinity as well as the three piko of our bodies: the crown of the head, the umbilicus, the genitals. It is one of numerous ways in which native Hawaiian spirituality or cosmology and western religious doctrine co-exist in Chun’s work.
From this point of departure, the viewer may choose one of two paths of dark gray stepping stones: one of slabs of porous lava rock (pohaku pele, from central `Oahu); the other, of finely-grained polished basalt (aniani, or mirror stones, from Kapa`a Quarry.) The pairing of these two forms of stone evokes the process, both mythic and geologic, by which the islands have been formed. At the end of each line of stones is a basin. One contains water (wai), the other, salt (pa`akai alaea)--two elements vital to the sustenance of life, two elements with sacramental purpose. The lele and the two basins together create another frame with trinitarian significance.
Nau Ka Wae also provides another pathway, articulated by forty smaller basalt stones (pohaku) that are mounted on the walls at eye-level. The configuration suggests the stations that marked the last hours of the life of Christ; the number might allude to the days or years of testing in the wilderness. Each stone, with its own unique contours, presents a polished face to the viewer. Each has been hollowed out and capped with a slightly tapered section of `alahe`e wood, a material imbued with its own considerable significance and history of indigenous use. The juxtaposition of wood and stone also suggests another kind of piko, a place of connection and transmission.
This row of stones and their guarded inner spaces provide still another choice: do we simply observe, and move on, stopping only to reflect? Or do we actively inquire about other levels of meaning, knowledge that is hidden, removing the cap of `alahe`e to see what is contained within? What are we entitled to know? Able to comprehend? Chun wants us to ponder these choices and the responsibilities they imply. She has also intended this installation to be interactive, and so invites us to seek with care the knowledge contained within the stones. Removing a cap of wood, we note first that it is inscribed with a brief text. Looking into the heart of stone, we see, dimly evident, the image of a person who also had to make choices–-choices that would in turn affect the lives of many others. Some are known for wae pono (right choosing); others for the internal conflicts that compromised their capacity to so choose.
Nau Ka Wae thus both enlightens and obligates its viewers, emphasizing the complexities of choice while also affirming the ways in which individual choices, made each day, can be empowering as we select the pathways that shape our lives. We understand in a new way the deep significance of caring for and remaining connected to the land that speaks our history and feeds our spirit. The pohaku that mark the paths we have chosen are also those that nourish our existence.
Marcia Morse
