Ahilapalapa Rands

Across The Sea is a body of work developed in 2024 for a solo exhibition at Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua. The exhibition was presented alongside a re-staging of Lift Off in the adjoining gallery space. An accompanying essay by my Aunty, Dr Andrea Low, provides important familial and political context for the work. You can read the essay here: https://pataka.org.nz/news/Andrea-low-hawaiian-connections/

Lift Off, 3 channel animation & tinsel installation, 3.25min (looped)

You can watch an example of the all three video screens in the installation Lift Off here. Please note the final installation work disperses the screens in the gallery space and includes a tinsel curtain.

Since the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 there has been unending encroachment upon Kānaka Maoli. The ongoing struggles of the sacred Mauna Kea highlights a tension between Western and Hawaiian sciences and epistemologies. Hawaiian land protectors are often framed as anti-science, which is ironic given the astrological nature of Hawaiian culture. As a long-distance supporter of Mauna Kea, Rands uses art to highlight the lack of Indigenous autonomy over such sacred spaces. With a look to the future Lift Off pays homage to the ʻĀina warriors standing strong on the mountain.

Synopsis: "The sound of a bellowing Hawaiian Ipu drum beat calls across the floor of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art. Turning a corner, you suddenly encounter a shimmering, hanging curtain of deep blue, aqua and silver tinsel. Looking adjacent reveals projected images of animated satellites. They jump, leap and gyrate to the beat of the master drumming teacher, the Kumu Hula. Eventually, the towers obliterate into pixels of digital confetti, until there are no more colonial intrusions left on the volcanic expanse of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea...Not only does Rands imagine Mauna Kea clear of telescopes, she imagines Hawaiian epistemologies - specifically that of hula - to be the powerful forces by which the telescopes are removed. Following in the footsteps of a suite of Indigenous futurist artists from Turtle Island to Hawaiʻi, Rands' animation uses traditional practices to imagine radical change."

- Lana Lopesi from the essay Solidarity Through Distance: Radical Imagination in the work of Ahilapalapa Rands, published on circuit.org.nz.
Credits:

Artist: Ahilapalapa Rands
Animation assistance: Fred K Tschepp
Ipu beat: Auliʻi Mitchell (remastered by Nikolai Mahina)

Commissioned by the Brisbane IMA institue as part of The Commute

Exhibitions:

The Commute, IMA Brisbane, 22 September – 22 December 2018.

Transits & Returns, Vancouver Art Gallery, September 28 2019 - February 23 2020.

Into The Open, New Zealand Art Festival Te Papa, February - March 2020

Pacific Century – E Ho‘omau no Moananuiākea (Hawai‘i Triennial 2022 (HT22)) March - May 2022

Cosmic Beings, Cement Fondu, Sydney, 5 August 2023 — 24 September 2023

Luminocity, Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. October 2023

Across the Sea, Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua, March - June 2024

Hoa Pili is a suite of five velvet banner works created for a group exhibition Tali at Melanie Roger Gallery, Auckland in 2025. The banners continue my ongoing exploration of Hawaiian sovereignty articulated through textile traditions, drawing on ceremonial, political, and ancestral visual languages. Working at the scale and format of banners allows these works to operate as both homage and assertion, carrying histories of resistance, kinship, and continuity within a contemporary gallery context.

In Fijian (vosa vakaViti) Tali means to plait or interweave, this is the approach taken in the making of this exhibition, facilitated by Claudia Jowitt. With the works weaving together references to histories and traditional practices of the South Pacific from a contemporary diasporic perspective, grounded in the whakapapa represented in this show from ‘Avaiki Nui/Kūki ‘Āirani, Hawai’i, Motu o Sāmoa, ‘Otu Tonga, Rotuma and Viti.

Tali features new and recent work from Serene Hodgman, Claudia Jowitt, Sione Monū, Ahilapalapa Rands and Salome Tanuvasa. This exhibition celebrates a shared ethos of platforming connections to homelands and the ties that bring them together as makers. - exhibition statement from Melanie Roger Gallery

I maika'i ke kalo i ka 'ohā

The goodness of the taro is judged by the young plant it produces (Pukui, 1983, p. 133)

This edition of 5 banners was created in 2022 and exhibited at Moana Fresh. Building on work created for a group show at Object space earlier in the year this edition references Hawaiian royalist pride alongside a celebration of our ʻike kupuna preserved through ʻolelo noʻeau or Hawaiian Proverbs.

Materially, the works draw on traditions of banner-making and adornment associated with aliʻi, where textiles operate as markers of identity, status, and collective memory. Here, that visual language is reoriented through a contemporary lens, holding space for diasporic connections and the ongoing work of remembering and re-grounding.

twisting, turning, winding assembles a temporary archive of takatāpui and queer objects. LGBTTQIA+ creative practitioners from the fields of design, craft, art and architecture were invited to select something in their possession. The objects range from things people have made, found or were gifted, and reveal the diversity of takatāpui and queer experience.

The exhibition’s use of the terms ‘takatāpui’ and ‘queer’ positions bodies and pleasure as entities that are understood differently across socio-cultural and historic divides. Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Lee Smith simultaneously rediscovered the term takatāpui in the late 1970s, which led to its increasing reclamation by Māori with diverse gender identities, sexualities and sex characteristics. This ancient word means ‘intimate companion of the same sex’ and has been used by Māori scholars such as Elizabeth Kerekere to evidence a pre-colonial openness towards gender and sexual fluidity. Alternatively, the word queer was reappropriated from its trans-/homophobic origins in the 1980s as a politically charged understanding of love, desire, sex and gender. Queer seeks to destabilise institutionally sanctioned hierarchies and any claim asserting something as normal, fixed or universal.

twisting, turning, windingis built from a foundation that takatāpui and queer lives and ways of knowing exist, are important and are worth examining. The exhibition simultaneously acknowledges the cultural resonances of takatāpui and queer experiences and unsettles any notion of universalising identity. This temporary archive dispenses with clear boundaries between creative disciplines and reveals that the objects we live with are imbued with meaning and significance. The contributors share a willingness to examine, disrupt and search out alternative ways of representation.

—

Featuring contributions from:

Aaron Kong
Ahilapalapa Rands
Alex Monteith and Catherine Opie
Ana Iti
Areez Katki
Ary Jansen
Bailee Lobb
Bobby Campbell Wahawaha Luke
Carmel Rowden
Chris Parker
Christopher Duncan
Daegan Wells
Daniel John Corbett Sanders
Deborah Rundle
Fiona Amundsen
Gui Taccetti
Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho and Kahu Kutia
Jaimie Waititi
James Tapsell-Kururangi
Jo Bragg
Julian Chote
Kaan Hiini
Keva Rands
Layne Waerea
Luca Nicholas
Nooroa Tapuni
Peter Derksen
Peter Hawkesby
Rebecca Ann Hobbs and Harriet Stockman
Reuben Paterson
Ron Te Kawa
Rosanna Raymond
Sarah Hudson
Sharon Fitness
Shaun Thomas McGill
Siân Quennell Torrington
Sione Monū
Sorawit Songsataya
Steve Lovett / Pepper Burns
Steven Junil Park
Sue Gallagher
Tyrone Te Waa
Tyson Campbell
val smith
Vinayak Garg
Welby Ings
Yuki Kihara

—

Curated by Richard Orjis with exhibition design by Micheal McCabe

Photographs by Samuel Hartnett.
Takatāpui and community advisory by Kaan Hiini

Visit site here

Oceanic Reading Room, 2018, Whitby UK

Oceanic Reading Room was commissioned as part of ‘Encounters’ a responsive exhibition staged by Invisible Dust in reaction to and as part of the Captain Cook Anniversary programming in Whitby, UK.

‘Aʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi’
All knowledge is not taught in one school – Hawaiian Proverb

This multi media project was staged in one of the reading rooms of the Whitby Library and aimed to introduce local audiences to ways in which knowledge and learning is gathered and shared by some of the indigenous peoples from the Pacific Islands. Through film, maps, books, quotations and interviews, Rands created a library within a library, a comfortable and welcoming space in which to explore art, science and research from a non-Western perspective. By looking at different ways of holding and acquiring knowledge we can start to find different ways of accessing our shared histories and make space for our sometimes shared, sometimes distinct worldviews. The books from the Reading Room are still available to enjoy in Whitby Library.

As part of the project rands created an hour length documentary Oceanic Voices featuring indigenous perspectives on Captain Cook which played on a loop alongside a video Q&A session with Kanaka Maoli Scientist Dr Kiana Frank.

The Cookbook Project, September 2017 - March 2018

The Cookbook project was a commissioned residency based project in Yorkshire, UK by arts organisation, Invisible Dust.