Ontopo is pleased to present new works by Sean Connelly and Nanea Lum, two artists born in Hawai’i whose practices center land and ecology, climate activism, Native Hawaiian forms of knowledge and cultural sovereignty. 

Lum’s work utilizes a deep historical consciousness and recovery of Indigenous materials to produce research-based, labor-intensive presentations of kapa, a Hawaiian wauke beaten bark fiber. With a firm grounding in responsibility and intimacy surrounding materials, Lum harvests, processes, and screen prints on the kapa using collaborative and traditional craft methods. Folding contemporary arts practice into ritual experiences that express gratitude for nature's participation in the artwork, Lum’s kapa series foregrounds the earth as a pedagogical space and artistic medium. 

With attention to architecture and urbanism, Connelly’s sculptural work All Architects are Bad (2022) probes the triplicate histories of American militarization, urban development, and tourism in Hawai’i. The work’s title references the anti-policing slogan ACAB (“All Cops Are Bastards”) to challenge contemporary spaces that oppress indigenous thinking by channeling humor and joy as insurgent forces. All Architects are Bad speaks to the complex relationship and respect that Native Hawaiians have to their watersheds or Ahupua`a, while positting new methodologies for architectures that advance justice. 

Together, both artists resist the marginalization of Hawaiian traditions and instead draw creative dialogues offshore toward such sources of geographical and ecological knowledge. The works on view can be seen as situated in two temporal lenses: Connelly’s forward-looking, contemporary materiality is coupled with Lum’s historic recovery of Indigenous processes, together forming a cyclical conversation about the continuum of environmental extraction and climate crises. In their simultaneous celebration and critique of relationships to land, the conversations Lum and Connelly’s artistic practices engage in become ever urgent. 

Participating Artists
Sean Connelly
Nanea Lum

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