E ʻAi

September 4 – November 28, 2026

Curator: Kanani Daley
Gallery: EHCC + Ola Nā Iwi
Installation: August 29 – September 3
Opening Reception: September 4, 5:30 pm
Closing Date: November 27

Exhibition Concept

The exhibition explores the many ways island intelligence and lived experiences of food are understood, embodied, and expressed. It considers the systems, relationships, nuances, and challenges that shape lifeways across Hawaiʻi. This includes traditional knowledge systems along with their subtle and interconnected dimensions, including kilo, moʻolelo, aloha ʻāina, and the spirited phenomena through which they are experienced.

The inquiry also engages contemporary political and social realities: inequitable access to nourishment alongside an excess of commercially produced products; and the broader economic and historical forces that continue to challenge the shaping of relationships, time, and knowledge that make food sovereignty possible.

At the same time, the exhibition invokes the intimate, relational, and cultural dimensions of food that extend beyond biological necessity. Food as a nostalgia, ʻāina as remembrance, and the inner-wilderness of the unconscious mapping our subtle bodies with the natural world.

Artists

• Apolonio “Apo” Kalani Aquino Sr.
• Kainoa Gruspe
• Kainoa Makua
• Amber Khan
• Carl Pao + Hayden Pruette
• Tali Alisa Hafoka
• Ala Savio
• Gary Eoff
• Mary Babcock

Curator

Kanani Daley

Kanani Daley is the Ola Nā Iwi Gallery Curator at the East Hawaii Cultural Center and a PhD researcher in Philosophy of Integral Yoga and Post-Human Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her curatorial concepts explore cultural and social changes from a critical theory and psychospiritual (whole-person to whole-society psychology) research perspective.

She collaborates with contemporary artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners, exploring prolific narratives to reconstruct old problems. She approaches the gallery as a space for diverse perspectives, to bridge time and cultures, to rethink values and systems, and identify with the integral and imaginal dimensions of humanity.