Interconnections
Paradise Fashioned: Entanglements Between Fashion and Empire in Hawai'i
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christen Sasaki, Andy Reilly
Our paper introduces the concept of “Paradise Fashioned,” which examines the entanglements between fashion and empire in Hawai‘i. We seek to broaden the scope of the humanities to encompass a critical examination of aspects of everyday life, such as fashion and dress. As such, we emphasize the broad scope, power, and relevance of the humanities to everyday life. We note that although the workings of colonialism are commonly understood as a political and economic process, they are also deeply cultural projects. Our work approaches clothing and fashion in Hawai‘i as both an imagined and material aspect of the colonizing process. Using aloha wear as a case study, we examine how the colorful garments have historically been deployed to promote visions of a multicultural and harmonious US empire, while simultaneously rendering invisible Hawai‘i’s position as the most militarized state by camouflaging histories of genocide, white supremacy, and ongoing militarized occupation in the islands. Our paper focuses on the strategies deployed by the U.S. military and tourism industries to purposefully dress soldiers and defense workers in aloha wear when stationed on bases across the islands and Oceania. We argue that aloha shirt-wearing military personnel were used as living advertisements of the “multicultural paradise” attainable through incorporation into US empire.
SALTERWATER/ Interconnectivity: Curating Oceanic Journeys in Contemporary Indigenous Pasifika Art View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Giles Peterson
This paper explores SALTWATER / Interconnectivity (Tautai Gallery, Aotearoa, 2020–21) as a case study in Indigenous-led curating, where talanoa, performance, and activism amplified the voices of young Pasifika artists. Co-curated by Katharine Losi Atafu-Mayo and Giles Peterson, the exhibition embodied the relational, fluid nature of the Moana, focusing on justice, identity, and resilience through new works by contemporary new-generation indigenous Pacific islander artists. More than a static exhibition, SALTWATER extended into the Auckland Writers Festival (2021), where performance became a platform for storytelling, knowledge exchange, and resistance—addressing climate change, diaspora displacement, and colonial impacts. This project exemplifies niu ecologies, emergent frameworks in Moana curatorial practice that foreground Indigenous futurisms and activism, empowering young Pasifika communities to shape Oceania’s contemporary narrative. Drawing from my work as a curator and educator, I examine how exhibitions like SALTWATER function as models for community-centered curating—transforming spaces of art into spaces of gathering and healing. By examining curatorial methodologies rooted in niu ecologies, I discuss how they challenge institutional frameworks and reimagine Pacific arts, fostering deeper connections to ancestral knowledge, ecosystems, and people-place relationships. This paper invites scholars, artists, and educators to reflect on how curatorial practice affirms Indigenous Pacific sovereignty, resilience, and social justice. How do youth-led indigenous Pasifika artists, and creative movements sustain cultural and ecological resilience in the Oceania Pacific? This study explores contemporary Pasifika art as a powerful tool for niu ecologies, cultural survival, decolonial Indigenous resistance, social and design activism, community building, resilience, hope, intergenerational knowledge, protest, and renewal. https://www.tautai.org/saltwater-interconnectivity
Volumes, Textures and Water Marks: The Epistemic Basis of Hydrocriticism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mabel Moraña
This study focuses on the new critical approach of hydro-criticism for the study of events and symbolic production related to bodies of water, maritime journeys, underwater museums and other forms of representation in which oceanic extensions (or seas, lakes and other hydro formations) present alternatives to traditional land-based analysis. The paper discusses artistic productions that represent questions of migration through submerged pieces constructed as amphibious objects for aesthetic and ideological value that challenge traditional ways to interpret reality and human existence.
Drama as a Multicultural and Transcultural Tool for Communication: From Japanese Noh Theatre to American Hip-Hop and Hawaiian Hula
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yoshiko Fukushima
Drama is an effective tool to teach culture and language. It enhances cultural understanding, promotes cultural competency, and shows empathy to different cultures in the intercultural settings. In my paper, I focus on one of traditional Japanese performing arts noh and discuss the future of multicultural cooperation in globalized theatre. The training of noh helps us “learning new ways of speaking, gesturing, moving. Maybe even new way of thinking and feeling” (Richard Schechner, The Future of Ritual.) In US universities noh is taught to expose students to non-Western culture in the field of arts and humanities. These past two decades, I was able to experiment with directing adaptations of traditional Japanese performing arts in the classroom. Recently I had a stunning experience of seeing noh and hula kahiko fusion performance composition by my former student at University of Hawaii at Hilo. Keli’i Kalaukoa Masao Grothmann has developed a collaboration work with his mentor and noh master of the Hosho School Sano Noboru. Grothmann has tied my experiment as educator with his artistic career as kumu hula currently active in Tokyo. My paper also investigates Sano’s multicultural and transcultural experiments as noh teacher traveling all over Japan to teach noh to K-12 children and as performer breaking barriers of dance genres with the hip-hop dancer SAM. I examine how training combines the body of the tradition and the future of globalized theatre as a human experience utilizing universalities of the language of theatre across cultures beyond time and space.
