Hawaiian
Cover-Ups

When I cover my body with leis at the Honolulu airport, I appreciate the feel and scent of the flowers, while also wondering about the widespread use of the lei around the world to conjure paradise.

As I rest on the ground, covered in Hawaiian iconography, I attempt to understand a buried past.

What may seem protective, comforting, or economically advantageous may also reveal a different story.

In some cases, I see a complex culture blanketed underneath simplified icons of tourist consumption.

This stylization of culture contributes to an illusion that is both comfortable and predictable to the visitor and outsider.

Tutu used to tell us stories of hunting octopus as a child with her bare hands; here I gaze at Laie point, a popular tourist destination, and re-visit that story of my grandmother.

At the site of both traditional birthing stones and a sugar plantation, I question and participate in the commoditization of this land.

Pineapples suggest a pleasant symbol, but what else happened here?

Sometimes I revisit specific imagery found on postcards, but with a twist.

Through photography, the land, and my memories of family stories; I try to connect with this place as much as possible.

My lens is one of outsider/insider, tourist/indigenous person, colonizer/colonized.

This environment reveals as much about fantasy as it does about reality.