Bernice Akamine & Abraham Cruzvillegas
Saturday, June 16 3 to 5pm, with works on view through June 23 In collaboration with the Honolulu Biennial Foundation , KADIST presents a capsule exhibition and conversation with Bernice Akamine and Abraham Cruzvillegas, participating artists of the Honolulu Biennial 2019. Moderated by Scott Lawrimore, Co-Curator of HB19, the dialogue will center on the Biennial’s installation of iterative sculptural works in public spaces by Akamine and Cruzvillegas. At each site Akamine’s Ku’u One Hanau —a Hawaiian flag tent addressing houseless issues—will be put in critical and poetic dialogue with Cruzvillegas’ newly-commissioned, improvised sculptures culled from the cast-offs of a middle and upper class society made in response to the complicated relationship between outdoor and indoor life in the Pacific. Executive Director of the Honolulu Biennial Foundation, Katherine Ann Leilani Tuider, will share her experience on the making of a biennial in Hawai’i. Bernice Akamine, born 1949, is a Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) and Japanese-American artist, educator and activist living near Volcano on the island of Hawai’i. As a cultural practitioner, Akamine has used traditional practices of kapa (barkcloth) and waiho’olu’u (dyes and color) in decidedly non-traditional ways, especially in her advocacy for indigenous land rights and preserving the cultural continuum. Abraham Cruzvillegas, born 1968 in Mexico, is known for his autoconstruccións (self-construction), which refer to the self-made houses and structures found everywhere on the fringes of Mexico City, and reveal his deep interest in precarity, indigeneity, land use, and family.