Puni Kukahiko at Hawaii Pacific University

Art in America, April, 2007 by Marcia Morse

"Moth, Nail, X"--this title of the recent exhibition of works by native Hawaiian Puni Kukahiko telegraphs the artist's visual lexicon, elements that combine in various ways to define her conceptual terrain. At first glance, that terrain seems radically different from her earlier concerns with the ways in which indigenous culture has been commodified and hypersexualized. That work, direct and unambiguous, included such projects as hula-girl souvenirs cast in dark chocolate and the appropriation and manipulation of tourist-oriented printed matter.

Kukahiko's new work comes at ideas more obliquely, cultivating multivalent meanings and often using language as a way of pointing to cultural slippages and ruptures. Each word in the exhibition title provides a cluster of associations that allow her to move between the historical and the contemporary, between the genealogical and the personal.

"Moth" in Hawaiian is "pulelehua," in which "lele" (to fly, to jump) is embedded. But the artist also extracts "pule" (to pray) and "lehua" (a red flower)--words that point, in turn, to the overlay of Christianity (also referenced by "X") on indigenous religion, and to the elision of the floral and the feminine. Add to this the more common connotation of the moth as a creature doomed to destruction in its disoriented quest for light, and the mix of meanings becomes more complicated still. The moth emblem, rendered in stylized form as a screenprinted image, is everywhere evident.

Nails, whether drawn upon the surface of a canvas, actually overlaid on a wood panel or referenced by linear hatch marks that in turn carry their own associations of time and tallies, are another essential symbol. They may be linked to the wounds of Christ or understood as integral to the stability of built structures. But Kukahiko also suggests a more subversive, phallic interpretation, noting that in the early days of contact by the West, sailors traded nails for sex with native women.

The artist's new work includes several very different groupings that are nevertheless integrated through shared iconography. The "Pule Lehua" series consists of small wooden plaques--intimate stations of contemplation rendered in a stark palette of red, black and white--and makes extensive use of nails and hatch marks. Another cluster of work consists of four standing, painted single-panel wooden doors, hinged to form an X plan. On one door, titled Woman Story, a white female silhouette tattooed with a double moth emblem emerges at one side of the roughly painted central panel. Another moth hovers in the shadows below the figure, while above, several rows of hatch marks span the recessed panel. The "Cal Rice" series uses stretched bags emptied of the California product in lieu of canvas as a base on which the artist has printed, drawn and stitched. Other paintings on wood evoke abstracted landscapes in panoramic format.

A new generation of native Hawaiian artists has productively engaged in postcolonial interrogation and the reclamation of indigenous culture. What is distinctive about Kukahiko's work, as it has evolved, is her ability to personalize the political with images that retain a degree of intelligibility, even in cultural translation.