The Clouds Fracture into Unmapped Pathways, 2023
A series of ideas, drawings, and lino prints made in response to the incredible work of Brandy Nālani McDougall, named Poet Laureate of Hawai’i 2023-2025.
Brandy Nālani McDougall’s poetry stayed with me long after I finished her book, ‘Āina Hānau. Her powerful words build a rich and evocative world in which the pain and terrorism of colonialism is deeply and personally felt, as is the urgency of sustained and unrelenting resistance.
For days I was left contemplating the words written in her epic poem Real (G)Estate, in which McDougall mourns the circumstances that led to her storing her daughters’ umbilical cords, or ‘iewe, in her freezer rather than burying them on her own Hawaiian land. This goal seems further and further from reach as capitalism tightens its stranglehold on Hawai’i.
In my own practice, I find microscopic imagery to be a powerful tool when attempting to envision something that is not normally visible. Here, I have reconstructed a microscopic image of a cross section of an umbilical cord into the ground beneath Mauna Kea, which is currently being protected by Hawaiian activists from further development and desecration. McDougall laments how sand is imported from faraway places to create false beaches for tourists on Hawai’i. I have also microscopically explored the intricacies of single grains of sand.
A grain of sand may seem unremarkable if you don’t know how to look at it. I thought a lot about sand and the power of resistance. A single grain of sand may seem insignificant, but in great numbers it can change a whole landscape.
This project was commissioned by the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies, to whom I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate on such a meaningful project. The final lino cut design was hand-printed on a Vandercook Letterpress at University of Oregon’s School of Art + Design. Many, many thanks to Pete Railand for the immense help with this process.
This artwork was commissioned by the University of Oregon Division of Graduate Studies and is used here with permission.