Kīpuka Ireland, taking place during Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 (HT25) as part of its extensive and dynamic public programming, is a visiting and exchange initiative with three Irish artists traveling to Hawai‘i where a kīpuka of new art, cultural encounter and exchange emerges.
For Kīpuka Ireland, the three Irish artists introduce their work in different forms and exchange with the local artists and communities of Hawai’i at key moments: Kian Benson Bailes presents a participatory play workshop and reading session; Vivienne Dick screens a series of her films and features in a post-screening conversation; and Belinda Quirke performs a live sonic and vocal landscape. As a closing event for Kīpuka Ireland, a convivial gathering of the artists, curators, and visiting audiences takes place to share experiences and insights from the project, reflecting on the theme of the Triennial, ALOHA NŌ. ALOHA NŌ is a call for reclaiming the notion of aloha from its ubiquitous commercial and touristic usage towards one of its core meanings embedded in indigenous Hawaiian philosophy and value, that is, loving deeply.
Together with these four public moments, there are more intimate meetings and studio visits planned with Hawai’i based artists as well as bespoke tours to agricultural, geological and cultural sites that are unique to Hawai’i. The period of the artists’ stay involves a visit to the Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 taking place in over ten different venues under the theme of ALOHA NŌ. Now in its fourth iteration, Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 is the largest, periodic exhibition of contemporary art in Hawaiʻi, involving dozens of artists, key venues and organisational partners. ALOHA NŌ as a theme invites all — native islanders, settlers, immigrants, and tourists — to experience and un/learn how to enter and centre a place called HawaiʻI with un/learning the notion of aloha: ALOHA NŌ is a call to know, an invitation to form new understandings of love as acts of care, resistance, solidarity, and transformation.
Kīpuka Ireland has been curated by Binna Choi, one of three curators of HT25 (together with Wassan Al-Khudhairi and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu), in collaboration with Rachael Gilbourne (IMMA).
The project is produced in partnership with IMMA and supported by Culture Ireland. Kīpuka Ireland originated from Ireland Invites, an initiative that seeks to enhance international exposure for Irish visual artists by hosting biennale curators to undertake visits to studio and art institutions in Ireland.
Public Programme
Below is a list Kīpuka Ireland public programming taking place from 31 March – 6 April in Honolulu, Hawaii.
About Kīpuka Ireland
Kīpuka Ireland is a visiting and exchange initiative with three artists from Ireland organized as part of Hawai‘i Triennial 2025: ALOHA NŌ. The initiative consists of individual presentations, a plenary event, as well as intimate meetings by artist Kian Benson Bailes, filmmaker Vivienne Dick, and curator and musician Belinda Quirke, along with visits to the Triennial exhibitions and sites.
The Hawaiian word “kīpuka” carries many different meanings including “variation or change of form, as a calm place in a high sea, deep place in a shoal, opening in a forest, openings in cloud formations, and especially a clear place or oasis within lava beds where there may be vegetation”. *
Without mutual knowledge yet, there is much to resonate and share between two island nations, Ireland and Hawai’i, especially through the experience of colonization and struggles for independence, sovereignty, and decolonisation. Language, traditional culture and ancient cosmology, and non-extractive and caring connection to land are all embedded in the pre-colonial time and have been actively sought after to preserve and practice in the present on both islands. At the same time, it is understood that the condition and context of these decolonial processes differ, as much as their artistic and aesthetic languages also differ. Kīpuka Ireland is conceived for the possibility of mutual learning of these same yet different conditions and practices, expanding the familiar geographic relation towards a new artistic and cultural solidarity between these two islands.
*Maria Kawena Pukui and Samel H. Elbert, “Kīpuka”, Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English English-Hawaiian (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1971), 143, via Drew Broderick and Maile Meyer.
Supporters
