Bishop Museum Invites Media to Its New Exhibition, Project Banaba

# Bishop Museum Invites Media to Its New Exhibition, Project Banaba

Project Banaba commemorates the history of Banaba Island, which was destroyed by environmentally devastating phosphate mining and led to the total relocation of its people.

Honolulu, Hawaiʻi — Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum invites members of the news media to an exclusive pre-opening, closed-door preview of its new exhibition, Project Banaba.

Media Preview of Project Banaba

• Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023
• 1-4 p.m. HST
• Bishop Museum, J. M. Long Gallery
• Please RSVP with Lance Aquino via the contact information above

Interview opportunities:

• Banaban Scholar and Artist Katerina Teaiwa
• Exhibition Co-curator Yuki Kihara
• Exhibition Co-curator Joy Enomoto
• Bishop Museum Director of Cultural Resources and Exhibition Co-curator Healoha Johnston
• Bishop Museum Curator of Archaeology and Exhibition Co-curator Pūlama Lima
• Bishop Museum Exhibit Designer Michael Wilson

Project Banaba commemorates the history of Banaba Island in the Pacific Ocean, which was destroyed by environmentally devastating phosphate mining during the 20th century. This led to the total relocation of its people in 1945.

The exhibition features the work of Banaban scholar and artist, Katerina Teaiwa, who has created a contemporary art installation by combining her family's personal collections with those from state and national archives to shed light on the little-known history of Banaba, and its impact across the Moana (Pacific).

Banabans view their ancestral land, the rock of Banaba, as "te aba," or "the body of the land, and the body of the people." Project Banaba explores how both lands and lives were transformed by powerful, imperial agricultural interests.

From 1900-1980, a series of companies representing corporate, agricultural, and colonial interests of Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom mined the island of Banaba for phosphate. Following Japanese occupation during World War II, the island was deemed uninhabitable and the Banabans were removed to Rabi Island, Fiji, ending a millennium of continuous habitation on Banaba.

For two decades, Teaiwa followed the flows of extracted phosphate, miners, company and government officials, Banabans, and many stories linking Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Kiribati, Fiji, and Hawaiʻi. The Project Banaba exhibition is based on her research, interviews, films, photography, and performance work, as well as the scholarship and poetry of her late elder sister, Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa.

Addressing environmental and human trauma caused by the displacement and dispersal of land and ancestors is a central and driving impetus for the exhibition. As Teaiwa explains, "Banabans had been burying their ancestors in those lands for thousands of years; the ancestors have become part of the rock, they've become part of the soil. When the soil is removed, so are the ancestors."

Teaiwa's art-based research practice traces her Banaban ancestors to the sites of dispersal, by proposing gallery installations in countries where Banaban fertilizer was purchased and integrated with the land. It is noted that Hawaiʻi imported fertilizer made from the Banaba mining enterprise for years, to expand industrialized agriculture on large-scale plantations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The 78th anniversary of the displacement of the Banaban people will be observed on Dec. 15, 2023 during the run of the exhibition.

"Bishop Museum is grateful to present the Project Banaba exhibition as it offers us all the chance to learn about complex histories that inform our present reality in the Pacific," said Healoha Johnston, Bishop Museum director of cultural resources and exhibition co-curator. "Visitors to the Museum will have the opportunity to understand profound lessons that we, collectively, cannot afford to repeat. It also makes visible experiences of displacement, resilience, and resistance, which are familiar experiences to so many Pacific Islanders, yet remain less-seen."

The Project Banaba exhibition will involve three interconnected installations exploring how the people and the land of Banaba were viewed and transformed by imperial phosphate mining and global agricultural interests. Black and white photographs, color photographs documenting political protest and family connections, and textiles made by contemporary artists are remixed by Teaiwa and will be on view in the gallery.

The exhibition is co-curated by Yuki Kihara, Joy Enomoto, and Bishop Museum's Curator of Archaeology Pūlama Lima and Director of Cultural Resources Healoha Johnston, based on Katerina's archival research, interviews, film, photographs, and performance work, informed by the flows of phosphate rocks, mining workers, and the Banaban people.

Project Banaba opens to the public in Bishop Museum's J. M. Long Gallery in Hawaiian Hall on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023, and runs through Feb. 18, 2024. Additional information and tickets can be found at: BishopMuseum.org/Project-Banaba.