Out of Step,
In Place
New Red Order

February 15 – March 31, 2021

Aupuni Space is pleased to host an artists’ residency by the New Red Order (NRO), a self-identified “public secret society,” presented by Koa Gallery, Kapiʻolani Community College. While here, core contributors Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys, and their families, will temporarily reposition NRO’s practice in relation to contested histories; present day realities; and speculative futures of Ka Paeʻāina o Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian archipelago. Developed during the ongoing pandemic, across the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter of 2020, Out of Step, In Place departs from a series of pre-arrival questions:

Who you? No hea mai ʻoe?/Where are you from?/To where do you belong? Why are you coming here/What do you plan on taking away? What is the role of a host/What is the role of a guest? As protocols shift—moving across lands, waters, skies, territories, and nations—what are the implications for indigenous claims rooted in place-based systems of knowledge? How do we transpose different indigenous methodologies from one context to another and what does such a transfer entail? How might the works and efforts of different minority ethnic groups—in this case Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, and American Indians—coexist and communicate with one another? Given colonial histories of introduced disease; and contemporary inequities in health care access and mortality rates for Indigenous communities; how are the politics of visiting amplified in a time of pandemic or plague?

In working through these questions and more, NRO sets out to discern the similarities and dissimilarities, the connections and disconnections, between different Indigenous practices and concerns in the arts, especially with respect to notions of identity, history, place, appropriation, and collaboration. In addition to engaging in dialogue around these issues with artists, curators, educators, organizers, and community members; NRO will conduct private studio visits; organize public film screenings with local venues and organizations; continue their recruitment process; and present a new window treatment at Koa Gallery. Connecting Adam, Zack, and Jackson with a broad Hawaiʻi-based cohort allows for numerous and varied interactions; spontaneous collaborations; and free exchange of ideas, while providing safe access to diverse audiences across Oʻahu.

Out of Step, In Place was developed in collaboration with TRADES A.i.R. and made possible by generous support from the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund and Puʻuhonua Society.