Bishop Museum opens Hilo family's hula-inspired art exhibit on migration, stewardship

Bishop Museum opened Ea Mai ʻEiwa: Patterns of Practice in Honolulu on Saturday, putting a Hilo family’s hula-based visual art at the center of a statewide museum stage. For Hawaiʻi Island, the show gives the Kanakaʻole name fresh weight beyond Keaukaha and Hilo: it frames the family’s work as living cultural practice, not just family history, and links Big Island hula to questions of migration, community resilience and stewardship.

The exhibition in the J. M. Long Gallery runs through September 20 and features Nālani Kanakaʻole, who died in 2026, alongside Sig Zane and Kūhaʻoʻīmaikalani Zane. Bishop Museum describes them as a Hilo-based family rooted in hula ʻaihaʻa, the form of practice that ties dance, genealogy and place together. The show brings together new and existing works with botanical specimens and cultural treasures from the museum’s collections, a mix that places Big Island cultural knowledge beside objects usually seen only in institutional storage.

The title reaches back to the chant Kūhaʻimoana, which tells of shark gods migrating from Kahiki to Hawaiʻi. Bishop Museum and the co-curators, Sarah Kuaiwa, Ph.D., and kumu hula Kauʻi Kanakaʻole, interpret Ea Mai ʻEiwa as “here are the nine” or “structures of nine,” a reference to nine sharks and nine waves of migration. That framing matters on Hawaiʻi Island, where the Kanakaʻole family name has long been associated with the defense and continuation of Hawaiian cultural practice through Hālau o Kekuhi in Keaukaha.

The exhibit also lays out the family’s creative range. Nālani Kanakaʻole’s art direction and choreography sit alongside Sig Zane’s photography and textile design and Kūhaʻoʻīmaikalani Zane’s graphic design and immersive installations. Hawaiʻi Public Radio reported that the installation includes hula garments designed by Nālani and made by her students at Hālau o Kekuhi, Sig Zane’s rubylith sketches, family photographs, memorabilia from Holo Mai Pele and kites Nālani made before her death. DeAnne Kennedy designed the exhibit.

Bishop Museum has also scheduled public programs tied to the show, including a tribute to Nālani Kanakaʻole on May 8, an artist talk and dinner with Sig Zane on May 16, and an artist talk and dinner with Kūhaʻoʻīmaikalani Zane on June 14. The timing adds another layer of meaning, arriving in the year Merrie Monarch marked its 50th year of kāne hula and turning a family story from Hilo into a wider statement about Hawaiian Renaissance-era stewardship, kūpuna honor and the future of practice.