The sculptures of the final Wahi Pana (storied places) art installation have persevered through rain and shine over the last eight months to tell the moʻolelo of Laniwahine at Haleʻiwa Beach Park. An event on Friday brought together city officials, community members, the storyteller and the two artists together to celebrate, talk story and particiate in workshops.
Wahi Pana was funded through a $1 million grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge to share indigenous history through public art. Other Wahi Pana sites include Fort Street Mall, Fort DeRussy, Lēʻahi (Diamond Head), Kapiʻolani Park, Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, Koko Crater Botanical Garden, Kahe Point Beach Park, Hoʻomaluhi Botancial Garden, TheBus and HandiVan.
The installation tells the story of the arrival of moʻo (shape shifting water guardians) to Puaʻena Point on the North Shore before they processed across the Hawaiian Islands in pairs. One female moʻo, Laniwahine, guards and sustains the ʻUkoʻa and Loko ea fishponds of Waialua.
The 48 sculptures created by Amber Khan and Jordan Souza rest on pillars that previously supported a pavilion at Haleʻiwa Beach Park.
The installation involved the community from start to finish, according to Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts (MOCA) Executive Director Jennifer Santos. Throughout the project, community members gave Khan and Souza feedback on their plans and preliminary renderings.
“This is a representation of what the community can do when we come together,” Santos told Aloha State Daily on Friday. “This is about reclaiming this space as well as continuing the care and aloha ʻāina for this space.”
Santos said that she hopes the installation gives visitors a “more mindful experience, a guided connection to what lies under the surface.”
Paige Okamura, a member of the Honolulu Commission on Culture and the Arts, researched and translated the moʻolelo from Hawaiian newspapers and talked story with Waialua community members.
Several signs pointed Okamura to stick with this moʻolelo, she said on Friday, including the prominence of Puaʻena Point and the Loko ea fishpond in the moʻolelo, her late grandfather David Anana’s stewardship of the Loko ea fishpond and the name of one of Laniwahine’s companions, Alamuki, appearance on a land document in her family.
Okamura, who grew up in Waialua, said that public art is a success when the community sees themselves in the art and is invested in it.
“This is for our generational residents to look at something and see the stories they grew up with or the places they grew up with,” she said.
Manu Anana, president of Waialua Community Association and Okamura’s mother, told ASD that the art installation reflects the community and its history.
“We hope that people in this community, from descendants to people who are just joining our community, that they know and appreciate the stories that are important to us,” she said.
When Souza walked around Haleʻiwa Beach Park last year, he immediately thought of moʻo, he told ASD.
“I had a feeling I wanted to do something about moʻo. They want to be known again,” he said. “It’s almost like déjà vu, a premonition.”
Certain images in the moʻolelo stood out to Souza, like the procession of the moʻo, and he wanted the sculptures to be easy to digest to convey the moʻolelo.
Souza said that he is accustomed to working alone and Wahi Pana was like a group project, which took him outside of his comfort zone and taught him to be kind to everyone and open minded.
“I had to learn to play a lot with others. In that is frustration but also the beauty of different voices and different viewpoints,” he shared.
Amber Khan, who grew up in Kalihi, said she saw herself as a vessel for the moʻolelo that the community wanted to share.
She hosted workshops with the Waialua Community Association where they used hau from Loko ea to create cordage for sculptures depicting the mākāhā (traditional sluice gates) of the fishponds. Khan is gifting a sculpture of the mākāhā to Mālama Loko Ea Foundation.
Moʻo can take on many forms, including a terrifying form, according to the moʻolelo translated by Okamura.
“That for me was really hard to figure out,” Khan said. “What does wood look like when it’s terrifying?”
Khan incorporated shells from the beach at Puaʻena Point into what she calls Laniwahine’s terrifying form.
She said she hopes that visitors to the installation will medidate on the elements of time in the pieces, telling ASD, “there’s this huge amount of energy here waiting to be interacted with, of people’s history, the soils’ history, the trees’ history.”
Makua Perry, ʻāina and kaiaulu coordinator for Mālama Loko Ea Foundation, said during a panel on Friday that the installation is another way to connect with the ʻāina, and the foundation is constantly keeping Laniwahine in mind as they work to restore Loko ea fishpond.
“It all starts with being good stewards, and Laniwahine is the ultimate, original steward of these two very prominent fishponds,” he said.
The sculptures will remain until the end of 2028, when the next city administration will choose how to move forward.
Haley Lehman can be reached at haley@alohastatedaily.com.
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