Banabans view their ancestral land, the rock of Banaba, as te aba, “the body of the land, and the body of the people.” This exhibition will involve three interconnected installations exploring how the people and the land of Banaba were viewed and transformed by imperial phosphate mining and global agricultural interests.

In Project Banaba, Banaban scholar and artist Katerina Teaiwa brings together rare historical archives and multimedia works that shed light on this little-known history, and its ongoing impact on Pacific communities. The exhibition is co-curated by Yuki Kihara, Joy Enomoto, Bishop Museum’s Curator of Archaeology Pūlama Lima and Director of Cultural Resources Healoha Johnston, based on Katerina’s archival research, interviews, film, photographs, and performance work, informed by the flows of phosphate rocks, mining workers, and the Banaban people.