Reverence Over Inquiry
A response to Hawai‘i Contemporary’s latest exhibition “Aloha Nō” and the burden of potential in local art.
Let’s begin with the title: Aloha Nō. At first glance, it feels more like a gesture than a provocation. The word aloha is one of the most overused in Hawai‘i – spoken in tourist brochures, government slogans, branding campaigns, and community art projects alike. It’s used so frequently, and often so casually, that it has lost much of its depth and complexity. Its overuse is no longer just tired – it’s suspect. When we hear it now, we often don’t feel warmth or meaning, but fatigue. The repetition of the word in surface-level ways has eroded its power. So when it appears in a title without context or invitation to reflect, it risks sounding less like a cultural foundation and more like a marketing default.
And then there’s the nō. In Hawaiian, nō is an intensifier. It affirms, it sharpens, it declares. It’s meant to add force to what precedes it. But here, it feels ornamental – emphatic but empty. It gives weight to a word that hasn’t been defined in context. Instead of clarity, we get the illusion of depth. The title asks to be admired, not examined.
It was also a missed opportunity to showcase the Hawaiian language with more substance – beyond the ten or so commercially overused words that circulate in tourism, merchandise, and casual activism. A title in Hawaiian doesn’t automatically confer meaning. If anything, it should ask more of us. There are hundreds of poetic, complex, and culturally rich expressions that could have offered not only texture, but guidance – for us, the people of Hawai‘i.
Take for example this ‘ōlelo no‘eau:
“He ‘ōpū hālau.”
A house-like stomach.
Said of a person who is kind, hospitable, and generous – whose capacity to receive others is as large as a great hall.
A title like that would have immediately invited interpretation and discussion. It would have modeled depth instead of decoration. It’s not about academic fluency – it’s about curiosity and imagination. We have the sources. The opportunity is already there.
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I’m not an expert in the Hawaiian language. Like most Hawaiians, I’m trying to learn. So if we do embrace the idea that this show is for us – for our small place in the mid-ocean – then we can also embrace a kind of language that is meaningful to us, even if it’s not legible to the rest of the world. A phrase like he ‘ōpū hālau might not register beyond our shores, and it doesn’t need to. In fact, I would argue that if we use a Hawaiian phrase that is anecdotal and linked to the Hawaiian way of life in the past, it becomes magnetic. It draws people in precisely because it’s real – because it carries the scent of place, memory, and meaning.
That instinct – to gesture rather than investigate – is a familiar pattern in Hawai‘i’s cultural landscape. There’s a growing habit of turning inward, of creating works that speak to ourselves but not beyond us. Expressions of identity are offered with reverence, but rarely with challenge. Opportunities to engage the wider world are treated with suspicion. The unfamiliar becomes threatening, and possibility is framed as risk.
Hawai‘i is always said to have “so much potential.” But over time, potential has become a kind of burden. We carry it like a weight. The promise of what we could be makes us hesitant. It demands perfection, performance, representation. Rather than liberate us, this perceived potential often makes us cautious – afraid to speak too boldly, to risk failure, or to be misunderstood. In the art world, that tension shows up as a kind of soft participation: works that reference big ideas but stop short of embodying them.
As for the exhibition itself, it is not without strengths. Several pieces reflect skill, craftsmanship, and emotional sincerity. But as a whole, the show feels tentative. It leans heavily on symbolism – cultural signifiers, familiar phrases, identity markers – but doesn’t always follow through on their meaning. There’s a kind of ambient reverence to the curation, but very little inquiry. It invites admiration more than engagement.
This raises a difficult but necessary question: Are we prepared to truly compete? If we are serious about being part of the global art conversation, we should be willing to demonstrate our ability at the highest level. A show like this could have positioned itself to rival the ambition of Art Basel, Frieze London, or Gagosian – not by mimicry, but by conviction. Instead, it feels unsure of itself. It gestures toward global relevance without staking a claim.
The deeper tension lies in our ambiguous relationship with the global art world. On one hand, there’s a quiet expectation of inclusion – an assumption that Hawai‘i’s presence should naturally be acknowledged. On the other, there’s a reluctance to fully confront the reality that, for the most part, the global art world is not paying close attention to us. That indifference is not necessarily a dismissal; it could be an opening. But instead of approaching that gap with clarity and purpose, we sometimes fall into a kind of passive entitlement – wanting recognition without fully engaging in the rigorous, often uncomfortable work that recognition demands.
Meanwhile, we don’t fully embrace the small, local, provincial show we do have. We don’t take ownership of it or commit to making it excellent on its own terms. We remain caught in between: not quite global, not quite local; not fully ambitious, not fully grounded. The result is a kind of ambient uncertainty – an exhibition that doesn’t seem to know who it’s for, or what it really wants to say.
I personally believe we do have the talent to compete at the highest levels. But talent alone isn’t enough. If we don’t aim for excellence – if we don’t do everything necessary to be taken seriously – then we should at least be honest about that. And in that honesty, we may find clarity. Perhaps by thinking more locally, more precisely, and more courageously, we might finally produce something that doesn’t just ask to be included – but demands attention by virtue of its rigor and integrity.
And here’s the deeper opportunity: Hawai‘i’s unimportance is its advantage. Precisely because the global art world isn’t watching us closely, we are free. We are not bound by its expectations, not tethered to its marketplace. We can experiment. We can develop slowly and sincerely. We can invent new forms, and say what we truly mean – without needing to perform significance for an imagined audience. Invisibility can be a kind of sanctuary. It gives us space to become something real.
When we stop using words like aloha and nō as symbolic shields – when we ask them to mean more, not less – something shifts. We move from reverence to inquiry. From identity to imagination. From being seen to being heard.
