Bishop Museum and World Wide Walls Present UNDER/GROUND

Ambitious new exhibition explores the social and cultural conditions that gave rise to modern street art and hip-hop culture.

NEWS MEDIA: Please see the end of this release for an invitation to a Media Preview of the exhibition.

Bishop Museum, the State of Hawaiʻi Museum of Natural and Cultural History, in partnership with World Wide Walls, presents UNDER/GROUND — an ambitious new exhibition that explores the social and cultural conditions that gave rise to modern street art and hip-hop culture.

Following their groundbreaking 10-year anniversary celebration at Bishop Museum in 2021, World Wide Walls returns to the Museum's Castle Memorial Building on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2026. Created by World Wide Walls Co-directors Jasper and Amy Wong, together with Bishop Museum Exhibit Designer DeAnne Kennedy, UNDER/GROUND juxtaposes two separate worlds and the spaces where they intersect, examining the relationships between fine art and street art, insider and outsider art, and how cultural value is then assigned and perceived.

UNDER/GROUND features all-new murals, original artworks, sculptures, and immersive installations. By recreating and recontextualizing these environments within Bishop Museum, the project bridges street culture and institutional space, recognizing the legitimacy, innovation, and lasting influence of street art and hip-hop. Ultimately, the exhibition celebrates these movements as vital forms of human expression that reshaped global culture and continue to inspire new generations to create, speak, and be seen.

"Museums can sometimes feel intimidating or inaccessible to people, but that has never been our experience with Bishop Museum," said Jasper Wong, World Wide Walls founder and co-director. "It's always been an incredibly welcoming institution that embraces the community and creates opportunities to celebrate both their creativity and their cultural heritage. By opening its doors to contemporary artists and fostering meaningful dialogue between the past and present, Bishop Museum has become a place where people from all backgrounds can connect through art, history, and shared experiences."

"When I first joined this project, I learned that subway stations in the 1960s became a powerful space for artists who were disenfranchised and who didn't have access to traditional platforms of expression," said DeAnne Kennedy, Bishop Museum exhibit designer. "Subway stations became their galleries, spreading visibility of this culture and its creatives throughout the city. Street art and hip-hop culture have made an enormous impact on modern art and music, transforming how we the public view art. Here on Oʻahu, we're fortunate to see fantastic street murals created by artists who established themselves through perseverance in a world where they strived to find their own places of identity and belonging"

Exhibition Features

Subway Station

Visitors will enter a full-scale subway station featuring a life-sized subway car that they can step inside and explore. The platform is surrounded by urban environments, including a convenience store, noodle shop, newsstands, and other neighborhood spaces that capture the everyday character of city life. Every surface is layered with graffiti, evoking the history, energy, and evolution of street art. Alley-like passageways will lead visitors from the station into galleries filled with murals, sculptures, and original artworks. More than an entrance, this installation transports guests into the world where street art and hip-hop emerged.

Hip-Hop History and Connection

UNDER/GROUND explores the origins of hip-hop as a cultural movement born from communities that were often excluded from mainstream media, institutions, and traditional cultural spaces. Without access to galleries, concert halls, or established platforms, artists created their own opportunities for expression. Rap and DJing became their music, breakdancing their movement, and graffiti their visual language. The city itself became the canvas, with walls, trains, sidewalks, and streets transformed into spaces for creativity, while block parties became gathering places for music, dance, and community.

Murals

New, large-scale murals will be showcased throughout the exhibition featuring artists from around the world, as well as locally. Participating artists include: 123KLAN, Askew One, Kitt Bennett, B-Side, Caratoes, Kelsie Dayna, Gary Draws Fish, Gian Galang, Giorgiko, Kris Goto, Hera, INSA, Insane51, Kamehanaokala, Simone Legno of Tokidoki, Jet Martinez, The Mighty Giants, Brendan Monroe, Archie Oclos, Kaelyn Okuhata, Lucky Olelo, Kim Sielbeck, Jack Soren, Tatiana Suarez, Tonk, Edwin Ushiro, and Willie T.

Sculptures

Sculpted artworks featured throughout the Castle Memorial Building will be created by: Tristan Eaton, KOLA PDW, Jay Howell, Katch, Jason Keam, and OG Slick.

The Get Down, curated by Thinkspace Projects

The Get Down brings the pulse of hip-hop and the power of visual art together in a new exhibition celebrating the unstoppable creative exchange between street culture and the studio. This show spotlights how graffiti, photography, fashion, and art have helped shape hip-hop's identity — and how hip-hop, in turn, has pushed artists to remix, sample, and innovate across every medium.

Featuring emerging and established creators, The Get Down traces the movement from subway walls to global stages, capturing the rhythm, rebellion, and raw imagination that define both art and hip-hop. Visitors can expect bold color, kinetic energy, and works that speak directly to the culture's past, present, and future.

WET PAINT, curated by Persue, Wane One, and Gangaway Gallery

WET PAINT is a traveling exhibition founded by artist and curator PERSUE after discovering New York City's iconic "Wet Paint" signs within the New York City subway system. Each authentic sign is taken from the subways of New York and sent to artists around the world to be repurposed as an original work of art.

Originally used by the transit system as part of its ongoing battle against graffiti in the subway tunnels, the signs take on a new meaning when placed directly into the hands of graffiti writers, street artists, and contemporary artists. WET PAINT transforms an object associated with controlling graffiti into a canvas celebrating the culture itself.

For its Hawaiʻi edition, WET PAINT is co-curated by Gangway Gallery, legendary New York City graffiti writer Wane One, and World Wide Walls founder Jasper Wong, bringing together artists and perspectives that connect New York's graffiti legacy with Hawaiʻi's creative community and the culture's global evolution.

Cosmic Thread, by Yoskay Yamamoto

Born and raised in Toba, Japan, Yoskay Yamamoto is a self-trained illustrator who fell in love with the urban culture of the West Coast. His new installation, Lullaby, features a papier-mâché moon floating over a cosmic bed adorned with flowers. He aimed to create a peaceful, dream-like setting for an intimate viewing experience. He sees the moon as a guiding light through dark times and struggles, with the bed symbolizing rejuvenation, and the flowers representing growth and life.

"If I've done my job well, visitors should feel a sense of fun and familiarity when they enter the UNDER/GROUND exhibition, from the eras we're referencing, the cultures we're hosting, the emotions we're evoking, or from simply having traveled via a New York City subway," said Kennedy. "Through collaboration with Jasper and Amy, our goal is to highlight a time and place where creativity was bursting out, and new forms of artistic expression were beginning to thrive."

"By using a wide range of mediums and disciplines, art can be made more accessible to the public, and creativity can be woven into the fabric of a community," said Wong. "Whether through murals, design, education, exhibitions, or community programming, each approach reaches people in different ways and invites them to engage with art outside the traditional gallery setting."

"Bringing together these different creative practices also creates a dialogue between artists, audiences, and the places they inhabit," Wong added. "It allows us to celebrate the cultural and artistic influences that have shaped our communities while inspiring new ideas and perspectives. In that sense, we're not only preserving the stories and traditions that came before us, we're also building on them. The work of today becomes the foundation for the work of tomorrow, ensuring that art continues to evolve alongside the communities it serves."

More information on UNDER/GROUND can be found at UnderGround.BishopMuseum.org.

UNDER/GROUND Media Preview

• Thursday, Nov. 19, 2026
• 1-4 p.m. HST
• Bishop Museum, Castle Memorial Building, 1st floor
• Interview opportunities:
  • Jasper Wong, World Wide Walls founder and lead director
  • DeAnne Kennedy, Bishop Museum exhibit designer
  • Select participating artists (TBD)
• Please RSVP with Krislyn Hashimoto of Stryker Weiner & Yokota Public Relations via the contact information above

Bishop Museum and World Wide Walls express their appreciation for the supporters of this exhibition: Hawaiian Airlines, White Sands Hotel, Montana Cans, 7-Eleven Hawaiʻi, Zippy's, XLARGE, Aloha Petroleum, Hawaiian Telcom, Thinkspace, Begin Here, Omidiyar ʻOhana Fund, City Mill, Sun Bum, Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation, Hawaiian Sun, UNIQLO, Enjoy Snacks, Sean Marrs Photography, Elyse Butler Photography, Brandon Shigeta, InnerBloom, Redefined.Media, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Art + Flea, Nordic PCL, Tūtū's Place by Highway Inn.