Leilehua Lanzilotti

kai uli — harp and fixed media (2018, rev. 2020)

for Ashley and Zyla, duration 6’

This work was originally part of a larger piece, Postcards II: Akari, that was commissioned by The Noguchi Museum in celebration of the exhibition Akari: Sculpture by Other Means. These light sculptures by Isamu Noguchi are made of washi paper and bamboo. The fixed media uses only natural sounds of rubbing, opening/closing, tapping the Akari so the audience can feel as though they’re inside the light sculptures, or perhaps overhearing their light conversations/adventures/dreams. The piece frames works of the past (on the original program), in the same concept as the Akari themselves which use traditional handcrafting/washi paper that is illuminated by new technology: electric light. The title of this postcard refers to the specific color of the ocean. Although modern Hawaiian has words for the color spectrum as described in English, there was originally only one word for the green/blue of the ocean.

uli. 1. nvs. Any dark color, including the deep blue of the sea, the ordinary green of vegetation, and the dark of black clouds; the black-and-blue of a bruise. . . . Also uliuli. Kai uli, the deep blue sea. — Hawaiian Dictionary. Edited by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Postcards II: Akari was commissioned by The Noguchi Museum premiered there on April 6, 2018 by Alice Teyssier, Ashley Jackson, and Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti.