Island Fishing is a video loop created from digitally composited, handmade, stop-motion animations. It uses traditional Japanese kirigami forms (cut-and-glue origami) to manipulate depictions of human bodies as represented in free tourist magazines distributed across Waikiki. The narrative depicts a moment from the myth of the god Māui as he hauls up the islands of Hawaiʻi. Māui’s magic hook is baited with a wing from the goddess Hina’s favorite bird, the ‘alae, and cast deep into the ocean where it is caught by the reef goddess and pulls up the Islands. This myth is shared as a creation narrative throughout Polynesia, and will soon be canonized in pop culture in Disney’s coming 2016 animated release Moana. The interplay of materials and narrative explores an aesthetic commodification of Hawaiʻi through the lens of tourism and its interaction with the representation and identity of the Islands. – Chris Ritson
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Chris Ritson is from Oahu, Hawaii and currently works above Honolulu in a mountain community named Tantalus. He studied at SFAI in San Francisco, specializing in New Genres Art. Growing up in a radically globalized tropical environment, he has always had a profound interest in the natural word, and continues to explore this sentiment through artistic discourse.
