Ho’ola ka wai ia Maui - He Moemoea

(Water Restores Life to Maui - A Dream)

TRAILER COMING SOON

Commission for Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 - On View at Bishop Museum Feb 14 - May 4

Immersive Video Installation featuring dresses featured in the film as projection surfaces, lei, and poetry

Traversing expansive dry riverbeds in South Maui to channelized rivers connected to Nā Wai ‘Eha and to West Maui, Ho‘ola ka wai ia Maui - He Moemoea reveals landscapes in need of restoration and healing, while also tracing places connected to the artist’s mo‘okū‘auhau, or genealogy. This piece weaves fantastical imagery of water being returned to these lands, personifications of water and water guardians, and glimpses of Indigenous microbes brewed for Mālama Leiali‘i, a bioremediation project by Maui Bioremediation Group that is helping to heal the soil in Lahaina.

A visual meditation on landscapes of Maui that have been affected by colonization, deforestation, and the diversion of the flow of rivers and water sources for capital gain, the video points to the resulting displacement of peoples and the devastation of lands in Maui and throughout Ka Pae ‘Āina o Hawai‘i, or Hawaiian Archipelago. By connecting current bioremediation efforts to magical realist explorations and the inherent spirituality embedded in the soil and water, Ho‘ōla ka Wai iā Maui—he Moemoeā functions as a prayer, an offering, to return life, water, and abundance back to sacred lands and spaces on Maui and throughout Hawai‘i.