For this year’s edition of the Hawaii Triennial—“ALOHA NŌ,” open across 13 sites on 3 islands through May 4—we spoke with with Halona Norton-Westbrook, Director & CEO of Honolulu Museum of Art, and Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Co-curator of the presentation.
By Eliza Jordan
The Hawaii Triennial 2025 (HT25), “ALOHA NŌ,” is open across 13 sites in O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, and Maui through May 4. The Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) is spotlighting eight of the activation’s 49 participating artists and collectives—each one offering newly commissioned works that reflect on the urgent and expansive theme of “aloha.” Curated around the notion of “ALOHA NŌ”—meaning “truly, indeed, love”—this year’s edition invites audiences to [re]consider their understandings of love, solidarity, care, and transformation. At HoMA, the theme is explored through a lens of womanhood as a site of resilience and vulnerability, healing and confrontation.
“With these artists at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the curators have developed a theme around womanhood as both central to family, healing, and community, as well as the target of power and administrative control,” said Tyler Cann, HoMA’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art.
Upon arrival to HoMA, visitors encounter Rose B. Simpson’s A’gin on the museum’s front lawn—a commanding ceramic-and-steel sculpture of two stacked figures that embody respect (“a’gin” in the Tanoan language) and reflect Simpson’s commitment to Indigenous cultural preservation and environmental consciousness. Inside the museum, Teresita Fernández’s Volcano (Cervix) offers a meditation on systemic violence and ecological collapse. Crafted from solid charcoal and black sand, the artist reimagines the islands of the Caribbean as a single cervix-like form, invoking histories of colonial exploitation, eugenics, and ecological destruction.
Hayv Kahraman also weaves layered narratives of loss and regeneration in her installation Gamla and Barghouth (The Louse and the Flea), inspired by Iraqi folklore and Hawaiian ecology. Kahraman spent time researching endangered native species at the Bishop Museum, incorporating symbols like the ōhiʻa lehua tree and endemic snails to frame grief as a space of restoration and resilience.
Portraiture and community interconnection then come alive in Gisela McDaniel’s vivid new oil paintings, accompanied by audio recordings of her subjects—Guahan (Guam) activists and healers—sharing their personal and political experiences. As an American artist of CHamoru descent, who regularly highlights Indigenous traditions as sites of both tenderness and resistance, the work remains true to her creative practice and ethos.
Meanwhile, Kanitha Tith presents an intimate suite of wire sculptures and watercolor paintings, crafted through slow, meditative processes that evoke freedom and memory. Drawing from her experiences in Cambodia’s independent cinema scene and collective memory, Tith’s art oscillates between figuration and abstraction. Culminating the HoMA presentation is Edith Amituanai’s poignant film Vaimoe, screening on loop in Gallery 14. Following her aunt’s return to Samoa after decades abroad, the film reflects on diasporic longing, cultural transformation, and the shifting landscapes of memory and belonging.
Together, the artists at HoMA embody the spirit of “ALOHA NŌ”—a deeper, more complex aloha that persists through grief, survival, and collective imagination. As Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 unfolds across the islands, HoMA’s contribution underscores the transformative power of art to confront histories and cultivate new visions for the future. Whitewall spoke with Halona Norton-Westbrook, Director & CEO of Honolulu Museum of Art, as well as Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Co-curator of HT25, about this year’s dynamic presentation.
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Image: Installation view of Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 at Honolulu Museum of Art. Rose B. Simpson. “A’gin,” 2025. Ceramic, wood, and steel. Hawai‘i Triennial 2025. Courtesy of the artist; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
