Puna Kuakea (2013)
Excerpt on the Puna Kuakea Screenprint Series from Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature by Brandy Nālani McDougall
Exemplifying aesthetic sovereignty and continuance through contemporary Kanaka visual art, the cover artwork chosen for this book is taken from a screen print by Joy Enomoto entitled Last Coral Standing. Part of a series completed in 2013 called Puna Kuakea, which may be translated as “Bleached Coral,” Enomoto calls attention to the rapid rate of coral bleaching in the Pacific: “When corals are stressed by extreme conditions, they expel the algae living in their tissues. . . . The health of the reef rests in its coral beds. If the corals do not reabsorb the algae in the near term they will die” (“Puna Kuakea”). Inextricably linked to climate change, as well as other consequences of capitalist consumerism and unregulated industry, such as dredging, overfishing, pollution, and toxic dumping, over a third of the world’s reef-building corals are facing extinction.
Through layers of white and gray over gradations of blue excepting a lone red-turning-white fan coral, Last Coral Standing suggests the moment of algal expulsion, the death of the coral, and its loss of color while also presenting a portrait of devastation haunted by ghostly strands of what were once living coral polyps. Against the monotone blue-gray backdrop that blurs the division between the ocean and sky, the red fan coral is meant to be striking yet fleeting, its redness evocative of blood, emphasizing this vision of death and perhaps even portending the loss of human and other life that could correlate with coral bleaching. Enomoto renders the bleached coral exoskeleton a white shadow of its living self...p 48 - 49
Excerpt on the Puna Kuakea Screenprint Series from Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature by Brandy Nālani McDougall
Exemplifying aesthetic sovereignty and continuance through contemporary Kanaka visual art, the cover artwork chosen for this book is taken from a screen print by Joy Enomoto entitled Last Coral Standing. Part of a series completed in 2013 called Puna Kuakea, which may be translated as “Bleached Coral,” Enomoto calls attention to the rapid rate of coral bleaching in the Pacific: “When corals are stressed by extreme conditions, they expel the algae living in their tissues. . . . The health of the reef rests in its coral beds. If the corals do not reabsorb the algae in the near term they will die” (“Puna Kuakea”). Inextricably linked to climate change, as well as other consequences of capitalist consumerism and unregulated industry, such as dredging, overfishing, pollution, and toxic dumping, over a third of the world’s reef-building corals are facing extinction.
Through layers of white and gray over gradations of blue excepting a lone red-turning-white fan coral, Last Coral Standing suggests the moment of algal expulsion, the death of the coral, and its loss of color while also presenting a portrait of devastation haunted by ghostly strands of what were once living coral polyps. Against the monotone blue-gray backdrop that blurs the division between the ocean and sky, the red fan coral is meant to be striking yet fleeting, its redness evocative of blood, emphasizing this vision of death and perhaps even portending the loss of human and other life that could correlate with coral bleaching. Enomoto renders the bleached coral exoskeleton a white shadow of its living self...p 48 - 49