From a Native Daughter: Seeking Home and Ancestral Lines through a Dashboard Hula Girl (original) (raw)

Abstract

Nānā i ke kumu. Look to the source.-Hawaiian 'ōlelo no'eau (proverb) In the Hawaiian language the term 'ae kai refers to the place where land and sea meet, the water's edge or shoreline, the beach. It is, as Pacific historian Greg Dening has written, an "in-between space…an unresolved space where things can happen, where things can be made to happen. It is a space of transformation. It is a space of crossings." 1 This expanded definition of 'ae kai serves as a cogent touchstone for examining Adrienne Keahi Pao's and Robin Lasser's most recent installation work Dashboard Hula Girl: In Search of Aunty Keahi, which featured in the Smithsonian's Culture Lab exhibition 'Ae Kai: A Culture Lab on Convergence in Honolulu, July 7-9, 2017. In the following writing, I invoke a sort of 'ae kai of my own in which I merge scholarly analysis with visceral first-hand experience of Dashboard Hula Girl. The result, I hope, is a richly textured exposé that simulates in written form the enigmatic domain that comprises the convergence zone-that is, the 'ae kai-of intellectual understanding and felt encounter. San Francisco-based artists Pao and Lasser have been combining their creative energies for well over a decade to produce their enigmatic "Dress Tent" installation and photographic series. 2 The dress tents, which manifest as large-scale interactive "garments" that are erected on site-specific landscapes and worn by female subjects, are in equal measure whimsically playful and incisively political. In what amounts to a fusion of architecture, sculpture, fashion, the body, and the land, the tents function as discrete spaces for addressing a wide range of contemporary issues, including identity, gender

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References (10)

1. Greg Dening, "Performing on the Beaches of the Mind: An Essay," History and Theory 41 (2002): 1-24.
2. 2 Over the course of their ten year collaboration on the Dress Tent series, Pao and Lasser have worked with a number of other artists, including: Kovid Kapoor and Akshit Bhardwaj (Dress Tent skirt design and fabrication), Christy Chow (interior installation fabric design), and Kernen Dibble (arduino and dress form "wiggle" element). Other resources that were drawn upon in the conceptualization and creation of Dashboard Hula Girl were: Sam 'Ohu Gon III, Leilani Mokihana Pao, the Pao Family, Smithsonian APAC, and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. For more of Pao's and Lasser's work, go to: www.dresstents.com, www.adrienne pao.com, and www.robinlasser.com.
3. Cited in Megan Miller, "The Bizarre Wearable Architecture of the Tented Ladies," Co.Design, 9 September 2016, https://www.fastcodesign.com/3063551/ the-bizarre-wearble-architecture- of-the-tented-ladies
4. See, for instance, the "Hawaiian Cover-up" series at https://www.adriennepao .com/hawaiian-cover-ups/
5. Haunani-Kay Trask, "'Lovely Hula Hands': Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture," In From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty (Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 136-137.
6. The gallery space was a defunct supermarket located in the Ala Moana Mall in Honolulu and was filled with works by over fifty other artists and practitioners from Hawai'i and abroad.
7. Robin Lasser and Adrienne Keahi Pao, 'Ae Kai: A Culture Lab on Convergence exhibition proposal, author's personal files.
8. 9 Quoted in Laura Kina, "Hawaiian Cover-Ups: An Interview with Adrienne Pao" In War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, edited by Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 125.
9. See Kēhaulani Kauanui, "Diasporic Deracination and 'Off-Island' Hawaiians," The Contemporary Pacific 19 (1): 137-160.
10. The interior installation fabric design was done by Hong Kong based artist Christy Chow. To see her work, go to https://www.christy-chow.com/.