On Display: Nautilus the Protector

The Hawaiian & Pacific Collections are proud to exhibit Nautilus the Protector, a collection of woodcut prints by Joy Enomoto. The series will be only display through mid-April. Joy's artist statement is below.

Joy Enomoto is a UH Mānoa BFA alumni whose work is concerned with decolonizing geography, plantation genealogies and the salt water conversations that occur within the space of the diaspora. She explores the idea of creating and holding onto our own cartographies in a world of rising sea levels and the ongoing destruction of the seabed and ancestral homelands.

The Nautilus the Protector series is a response work to a poem by the same name, written by Lyz Soto. Nautilus Minerals Mining Company, based in Canada, has recently received a license to begin deep sea mining in the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea, seeking minerals found on the seabed growing near the hydrothermal vents. To break the foundation of the earth and to threaten those creatures, such as the nautilus that are 2 million years older than the dinosaurs, reveals the continued hubris and naiveté of the western world  for the sake of making more microchips for cell phones.  This work is in support of those natives of Papua New Guinea who have been fighting this idea since its inception and who seek to protect the origin of all life. The Pacific faces the fastest and most devastating threats from human induced climate change. We must ask ourselves, if we drill a hole through our beginnings, where will we be in the end?

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