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Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 Member Preview & Public Opening Dedication

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Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 Member Preview & Public Opening Dedication
Friday, February 14, 2025
5:00 – 9:00 pm

Castle Memorial Building | Flanders Lawn | Gallery Lawns

$10 pre-sale, $15 at the door for General Admission. Free for Bishop Museum Members

In partnership with Hawai‘i Contemporary, Bishop Museum celebrates the opening of the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 (HT25) featuring contemporary art from Hawai‘i, Moananuiākea, and beyond our shores. Experience HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum with gallery talks, poetry readings, and live music and more.

Museum Members will receive exclusive early access to HT25 at Bishop Museum before the exhibition opens to the general public. Join now to take advantage of this exclusive benefit and many more!

A circular pattern featuring wavy lines in blue, orange, and yellow hues, creating a plaid-like design.

Image Credit: Kealapūeoeo na Nālamakūikapō Ahsing

HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum

Now in its fourth iteration, HT25 is the collaborative effort of dozens of artists, key venues and organizational partners engaging on the central theme of ALOHA NŌ. A resounding call to know, ALOHA NŌ is an invitation to form new understandings of love as acts of care, resistance, solidarity, and transformation. Contrary to its ubiquitous and over-commodified presence, aloha is an action that comprises a profound love and truth-telling, a practice that has been kept and cared for by the people of Hawaiʻi for generations. This practice of aloha engenders deep connectivity to the ʻāina, oceanic environment, elements, and each other. It allows us to manifest sovereignty and self-determination, and to stand in solidarity with others.

HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum exhibits the work of nine contemporary artists, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Nālamakūikapō Ahsing, Emily Karaka, John Pule, Kapwani Kiwanga, Salote Tawale, Sione Faletau, Stephanie Syjuco and Tiare Ribeaux. Their respective art practices have a connection to cultural material and are informed by archival collections, including the collections of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. This intergenerational grouping of artists explores their personal and cultural relationships to land and colonized territories, offering visualizations of “home/land” and interpretations of its defense.

Exclusive Member Preview of HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum
4:00 –- 6:00 pm Enjoy exclusive access with an opportunity to engage with the artists and curators.
Castle Memorial Building

Public Opening of HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum
5:00 pm – Experience our Bishop Museum original exhibits, the J.Watumull Planetarium and activities on the Gallery Lawns.
6:00 pm – HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum Open for General Public
Castle Memorial Building

Three individuals stand in front of a dark wall. The person in the middle wears a colorful dress and denim jacket; the others wear neutral-toned outfits.

Image Credit: HT25 Curators Al-Khudhairi, Kahanu & Choi, Image courtesy of Hawaiʻi Contemporary, PC: Brandyn Liu

Special Programming

HT25 Curator Welcoming Remarks & Panel Discussion
6:00 pm
Flanders Lawn Stage
Curators Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Binna Choi, and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu, the first curatorial team for the Triennial composed of women of color, welcome guests and share their perspectives and praxis on their collaborative curation of HT25 ALOHA NŌ. Hailing from different backgrounds, the three curators have worked in a non-hierarchical arrangement to deliver HT25.

HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum Artist Talks
6:45 pm – 8:30 pm
Castle Memorial Building
Join our HT25 at Bishop Museum featured artists as they share brief insights into their process and inspiration in these intimate gatherings around their works.

  • 6:45 pm Nālamakūikapō Ahsing
  • 7:00 pm Kapwani Kiwanga
  • 7:15 pm Emily Karaka, represented by her daughter Vanessa Reynolds
  • 7:30 pm Salote Tawale
  • 7:45 pm Stephanie Syjuco
  • 8:00 pm John Pule
  • 8:15 pm Tiare Ribeaux
  • 8:30 pm Sione Faletau
  • 8:45 pm Brandy Nālani McDougall
Poetry Reading with HT25 at Bishop Museum artists
Brandy Nālani McDougall and John Pule
Flanders Lawn
7:00pm
Person smiling in a room with bookshelves in the background, holding a stack of books.

From the ahupuaʻa of ʻAʻapueo in Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, she/her/ʻo ia, is the author of two poetry collections, The Salt-Wind, Ka Makani Paʻakai (2008) and ʻĀina Hānau, Birth Land (2023). She is the director of the Mānoa Center for Humanities and Civic Engagement and an Associate Professor of American Studies specializing in Indigenous studies at UH Mānoa. She is the Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate for 2023-2025. Her newly commissioned work for HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum explores aloha nō and the concept of Aloha Ka‘apuni, or Revolutionary Aloha.

Man in a dark shirt sits at a table with hands folded, facing the camera in a dimly lit room.

When John Pule first arrived in inner city Auckland as a young adult in 1980, the formal tenets of poetry and painting were largely unknown to him. Over the next 30 years Pule would explore new directions as both writer and painter. He has since emerged as one of the most celebrated artists of New Oceania. His work is highly inventive, particularly in its adaptation of traditional Pacific artforms and is challenging and provocative in content. Drawing inspiration from a series of books in the Bishop Museum Library and Archives on the artist’s native Niue, Pule created a new large-scale painting while on O‘ahu. For HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum this work is presented alongside a booklet of collected poems.

Live Music with Lina Robins
Flanders Lawn Stage
7:30 pm
Person with red hair playing a ukulele outdoors.

Lina Robins, born and raised in Wai‘anae, westside O‘ahu, hails from a long line of musicians, songwriters and hula dancers. She grew up singing Hawaiian music from the age of 2 inspired by her dad, who then introduced her to R&B, Soul, Jazz, Pop and Rock and Roll. Lina plays the ‘ukulele, guitar and bass, performing professionally for nearly over 15 years now. One of her proudest moments is performing on the Oprah Show at age 12 with one of her heroes, Mariah Carey. Lina performs a mixture of RnB, Pop & Gospel, bringing a soulful lift to Traditional Hawaiian and Contemporary Island music.

He Pūʻolo Pāheona no Kaiwiʻula
a contemporary art-focused tour of Hawaiian Hall
5:30 pm and 8:00 pm
Immerse yourself in the beauty and history of Hawaiian Hall. Join us for a special tour examining the past, present and future of Hawaiʻi through the lens of Kanaka Maoli contemporary artists. Meet at the staircase in Hawaiian Hall’s front entry tower.

The Hawaiian Sky Tonight
J. Watumull Planetarium
5:15 pm, 6:00 pm, 6:45 pm, 7:30 pm and 8:15 pm
Each show is 25 minutes. Tickets required; reserve at Shop Pacifica upon check in. Free for members and children under 4, $3 per person general admission. Limited seating. Learn what stars, constellations, planets, and more can be seen in the skies above Hawaiʻi the night of the show.

Ongoing Offerings

Food and Beverage on the Lawn
5:00 pm – 9:00 pm

E Kōnane Pū Kākou with Kapena Baptista(Gallery Lawns)
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Much more than just a game, kōnane hones strategic and analytical skills applicable in times of both war and peace. Join kōnane enthusiasts to challenge your established strategies or learn the rules and techniques for the first time. Open to all levels of experience. Fun for the whole ʻohana!

Lauhala Weaving w/ Keoua Nelsen (Gallery Lawns)
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Weave the dried leaves of the Pūhala (Pandanus) into a stunning bracelet (one per attendee). Courtesy of Helumoa, Royal Hawaiian Center.

Lei Making w/ Maxeen Shea (Gallery Lawns)
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Use the kui (sewing) style to string an assortment of blossoms into a beautiful lei (one per attendee). Courtesy of Helumoa, Royal Hawaiian Center.

ʻUkulele Lesson w/ Puʻuhonua Jumawan (Gallery Lawns)
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Learn basic chords and sing a song as you strum Hawaiʻi’s best-known string instrument, introduced to the islands in the 1870s from Portugal. ʻUkulele provided. Courtesy of Helumoa, Royal Hawaiian Center.

Hawai‘i Triennial is the state’s largest, thematic exhibition of contemporary art from Hawai‘i, the Pacific, and beyond our shores, on view for 78 days across collaborating exhibition sites on O‘ahu, Maui, and Hawai‘i Island.

Bold red text on a black background promoting the Hawai‘i Triennial titled "Aloha Nō" from February 15 to May 4, 2025.

Artists

A person wearing a camo jacket and green cap smiles while holding boat rigging on a sunny day at sea.

Nālamakūikapō Ahsing

Jonathan Day Nālamakūikapō Ahsing was born on Oʻahu in 1998 and raised in Puʻuloa, ‘Ewa by parents Alan and Karin Ahsing. He is a Kanaka Maoli artist, mahiʻai, and apprentice voyager with Hōkūleʻa. Nālamakū’s work honors the lessons of his teachers, love of his family, and mana of his ʻāina. His work centers ancestral ecological knowledge and cultivates Kānaka Maoli life, land, and sovereignty. His process is his island, the material upon which he asks: What knowledge is encoded through pattern? How do we activate Indigenous wisdom to uplift contemporary solutions? How do we exact a language which embraces interdependence as a vision of the spectacular? Who are we as the ancestors of tomorrow?

Nālamakū’s work is deeply committed to perpetuating his language, history, culture, and community. His works expresses aloha ʻāina through ʻohe kāpala, printmaking, papermaking, sculpture, and biocultural restoration. He currently lives in Waimānalo and serves as the ʻĀina Restoration Coordinator for Kauluakalana, stewarding the lands of Ulupō Heiau and Kawainui Fishpond. He is a graduate of Kamehameha Schools and Williams College (Honors BFA, BS).

Recent exhibitions include: ʻAi Pōhaku, Stone Eaters at Leeward and Kapiʻolani Community College, Mai Hoʻohuli ka Lima i Luna at Hawaiʻi State Art Museum, He Noho Pili Kua//He Noho Pili Alo at Aupuni Space, and Unstable Connections at Williams College Museum of Art.

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Stephanie Syjuco

Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations. Her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, in order to investigate issues of economies and empire. Recently, she has focused on how photography and image-based processes are implicated in the construction of racialized, exclusionary narratives of American history and citizenship. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship Award, a 2020 Tiffany Foundation Award, and a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. She was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC in 2019-20 and is featured in the acclaimed PBS documentary series Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century.

Born in the Philippines in 1974, Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Walker Art Museum, and The 2015 Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan), among others. A long-time educator, she is an Associate Professor in Sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California.

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Kapwani Kiwanga

Kapwani Kiwanga (b. Hamilton, Canada) is French and Canadian, she lives and works between Paris and Berlin.

Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal and Art at l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

In 2022, Kiwanga received the Zurich Art Prize (CH). She was also the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize (FR) in 2020, Frieze Artist Award (USA) and the annual Sobey Art Award (CA) in 2018. She represents Canada at the 60th International Venice Art Biennale in 2024.

Solo exhibitions include Copenhagen Contemporary (DN); Serralves Foundation, Porto (PT); Bozar, Brussels (BE); Remai Modern, Saskatoon (CA); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (DE); Capc, Bordeaux (FR); MOCA, Toronto (CA); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (CH) ; New Museum, New York (USA); State of Concept, Athens (GR); Moody Center for the Arts, Austin (USA); Haus der Kunst, Munich (DE); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (CHE); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (USA); Albertinum museum, Dresden (DE); Esker Foundation, Calgary (CA); Power Plant, Toronto (CA); Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago (USA); South London Gallery, London (UK) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (FR)
among others.

She is represented by Galerie Poggi, Paris; Goodman Gallery,
Johannesburg, Cape Town and London and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.

Kiwanga’s work traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities.

Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance.

Kiwanga co-opts the canon; she turns systems of power back on
themselves, in art and in parsing broader histories. In this
manner Kiwanga has developed an aesthetic vocabulary that she
described as “exit strategies,” works that invite one to see things from multiple perspectives so as to look differently at existing structures and ways to navigate the future differently.

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Salote Tawale

Salote Tawale lives and works on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, Sydney, Australia. Working across performance, moving image, painting photography and installation, Tawale explores the identity of the individual within collective systems, society and communities. Works are contingent on her own body and experiences to present nuanced articulations of the complex negotiations of living in the diaspora as a Fijian woman of Anglo heritage living in Australia. Recent works expand these concerns and significance of indigenous methodologies as a form of decolonial practice. Tawale is a Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.

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Tiare Ribeaux

Tiare Ribeaux is a Kānaka ‘Ōiwi lmmaker, artist, and creative producer based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Her films disrupt conventional storytelling methods by employing magical realist explorations of spirituality, labor, and the environment to critique both social and ecological imbalances. Her work uses components of speculative fiction and fantasy to reimagine both our present realities and future trajectories of healing, queerness, lineage, and belonging. Ribeaux’s work traverses between the mundane and dreamworlds – creating stories around transformation and how our bodies are inextricably linked to land and water systems. She integrates immersion within community, personal/ancestral narratives, and Hawaiian cosmology into her lms. Her work often combines with installation elements to create immersive and expanded media experiences.

Outside of lm festivals, she has shown her work at galleries and museums – in single-channel formats, multi-channel, live cinematic performances, and augmented reality.

She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership including the Creative Capital Award, the NDN Radical Imagination Grant, the Native Lab Fellowship and Indigenous Film Fund from Sundance, two New and Experimental Works Grants from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Building Demand for the Arts Grant from the Doris Duke Foundation, the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Aairs, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others. She has given guest lectures at conferences and universities including ISEA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, SFAI, SJSU, and the school of ATEC at UC Dallas.

She served as Artistic Director at B4BEL4B Gallery for 8 years, curated and produced various media arts and performance festivals including the Soundwave Biennial and the Codame Festival, and taught international media arts workshops in Kyiv, Ukraine (2018) as part of the American Arts Incubator and Ōtepoti, Aotearoa (2023) as part of Leonardo’s Cultural Impact Lab.

She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership including the Creative Capital Award, NDN Radical Imagination Fellowship, Sundance Native Lab Fellowship, Indigenous Film Fund, two New and Experimental Works Grants from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Building Demand for the Arts Grant from the Doris Duke Foundation, and the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund, among others.

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Dr Sione Faletau

Dr Sione Faletau is an Aotearoa New Zealand born Tongan artist who is based in Otara South Auckland based. He is a visionary artist who skillfully navigates the intersection of tradition and contemporary expression. Faletau draws inspiration from the vibrant heritage of Tongan artistry, infusing it with a modern twist.

With a profound respect for the traditional art forms of Tonga, Faletau seamlessly integrates Kupesi (patterns) practices into a contemporary context. Through mediums that range from digital art, projection mapping, and digital sound scape crafts pieces that serve as a bridge between the past and the present.

Faletau’s work reflects a deep understanding of Tongan cultural symbolism and storytelling. Each piece not only pays homage to the rich tapestry of Tonga’s artistic legacy but also invites viewers to reconsider the dynamic evolution of culture in the face of modernity.

Having exhibited in Bundanon Art Museum Sydney Australia and galleries around Aotearoa New Zealand, Faletau stands as a cultural ambassador, bringing Tongan traditions to global audiences. Through his art, Faletau sparks a dialogue about identity, heritage, and the ever-evolving nature of artistic expression.

With a commitment to preserving and reimagining Tonga’s artistic heritage, Faletau invites viewers to embark on a journey where tradition and contemporary innovation coalesce, creating a visual narrative that transcends time and resonates across cultures.

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Emily Karaka

Emily Karaka was born in 1952 in Tāmaki Makaurau, where she continues to live and work. She is of Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Kahu o Torongare) and Waikato-Tainui (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Te Kawerau ā Maki, Ngāti Tamaoho, Te Ākitai Waiohua, Ngāti Rori-Te Ahiwaru, Ngāti Mahuta, and Ngāti Tahinga) affiliations.

Karaka has been exhibiting since 1977. Her paintings draw on diverse art-making traditions, including toi whakairo and abstract expressionism. Characterised by dazzling colour and emotional intensity, they frequently incorporate text and tie into the artist’s longstanding work advocating kaitiakitanga and tino rangatiratanga.

Works by Karaka are held by important Aotearoa institutions, such as Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua. She produced a series of paintings for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, NIRIN (2020), and the landmark Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art (2020–21) at Toi o Tāmaki.

Recent exhibitions include Matarau (2022), curated by Shannon Te Ao, at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi and Matariki Ring of Fire (2022) at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, which grew out of her 2021 McCahon House residency. A major solo exhibition, curated by Megan Tamati-Quennell, will be present by Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates, in 2024.

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John Pule
b. 1962, Niue (Lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand)

When John Pule first arrived in inner city Auckland as a young adult in 1980, the formal tenets of poetry and painting were largely unknown to him. Over the next 30 years Pule would explore new directions as both writer and painter. He has since emerged as one of this country’s most recognised painters and one of the most celebrated artists of the “New Oceania”. His work is highly inventive, particularly in its adaptation of traditional Pacific art forms and is challenging and provocative in content.

Gow Langsford Gallery has represented John Pule since 1994.

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