Iwalani Kaluhiokalani uses the interdisciplinary magic of music, choreography, and painting to create playful site-specific video installations infused with motion and light. Surrounding the gallery's entranceway, the work is composed of paintings, delicate paper cutouts, and superimposed video projections, comprising a multi-media archipelago of 'screens' that move independently of each other, including vignettes of crystals, miniature spirals, and river-like streams of imagery.

Kaluhiokalani generates videos by submitting photographs of her paintings and dance-based spatial prompts into an Al image generator. She works on an intuitive level, balancing the lush aesthetics of watercolor painting with digital acumen to consider the resonances of space and sound between people, concepts, and places.

The Radiance Chasers transforms Emerson Contemporary's architectural threshold into a liminal ecosystem. In Kaluhiokalani's words, it offers "part celestial altar, part descent ritual; a transitory zone where light, wind, and movement activate myth and memory." She takes inspiration from Polynesian artifacts, archipelagic landscapes, ocean restoration, sensory ethnography, and her synesthesia. Kaluhiokalani's installation evokes collapsible paradoxes, such as those between utopia and dystopia, ascent and descent. It also suggests the strength and regenerative possibilities of vulnerability.

IWALANI KALUHIOKALANI

IWALANI KALUHIOKALANI