By Kirstin Ohrt
Department of Art & Archaeology
Kapili Naehu-Ramos ’24. Photo courtesy Kirstin Ohrt
Kapili Naehu-Ramos ’24 has transformed Hurley Gallery into a vibrant, nurturing, protective nest.
Their exhibition title gives a sense of the rich symbolism that infuses their senior work: Moʻo. It means fragment of a whole, stories or histories, genealogy, or lizard, among many more things. In fact, its meaning is so multifaceted that Naehu-Ramos formed it into a poem, including the verse:
Moʻo: a biological design,
familial, genealogical line.
Hoʻomoʻo: perpetual succession,
to follow a course, hoʻomau:
to preserve, extended through time.
Exhibition Video Tour with Kapili Naehu-Ramos
Symbolism rooted in Naehu-Ramos’s native Molokaʻi Island, Hawaii, reverberates around the gallery. On the four walls, Naehu-Ramos has convened four akua, or deities, which have special meaning to them. Hanging opposite each canvas, a banner reflects corresponding symbolic motifs.
The first pairing honors Kihawahine, Naehu-Ramos’s direct ancestor who lived many generations ago and whom Naheu-Ramos describes as a shape-shifting lizard woman. Because they have direct ties to this figure, it is an ʻaumakua for Naehu-Ramos. For this especially intimate representation, Naehu-Ramos used traditional natural dies. For the wall hanging, textured grey with the ʻaumakua’s name written at the center, Naehu-Ramos used charcoal since Kihawahine took the form of a large black lizard. Opposite the canvas hangs a vibrant yellow banner dyed with turmeric printed with triangular shapes to represent lizard teeth running along the perimeter, framing repeated diamond shapes that represent scales. Naehu-Ramos wears the same shapes in a tattoo that spans their leg. The remaining works represent: Papahānaumoku, or earth, in shades of deep red, like lava, with a red banner of triangles balancing atop one another to represent mountains; then Hina, the akua said to be “fed by the moon,” whom Naehu-Ramos associates with the sea and the sky in shades of blue and turquoise with a banner displaying phases of the moon; and finally Pō’ele, in undulating purples to represent creation born of fertile darkness—a darkness that brings Naehu-Ramos to the very source of comfort and safety they aimed to recreate in their exhibition.
Small square mats woven from traditional leaf fibers and ribbon lie at the foot of each canvas imbued with each akua theme. Hanging on a side wall is another poem Naehu-Ramos wrote which threads the creation story through their art and their life. Painstakingly printed on traditional kapa fibers using a letterpress, the poem exemplifies the care and patience required of every element in the exhibition, from carving the blocks for the prints to days of soaking textiles in dyes. Naehu-Ramos invites the viewer to see behind the exhibition in a “peekaboo” annex housing the linocut blocks they used to create the banners.
The dramatic symmetry of the long, vibrant banners hanging from the ceiling creates a powerful homage to Naehu-Ramos’s ancestry. Crowning the banners, Naehu-Ramos has suspended a net woven from colorful fibers dyed by their mother, creating another nest. At the exhibition’s opening, Naehu-Ramos and their mother stood shoulder to shoulder inside the threshold of the gallery and sang a ceremonial song of welcome.
Though the exhibition is intensely personal to Naehu-Ramos, they hope that it offers solace and strength to all who enter and they look forward to showing it on their home island one day.
The exhibition Moʻo is on display in the Hurley Gallery from April 15-26, 2024.
