November 2023

In this podcast episode, we explore how native Hawaiian artist Prime integrates Indigenous knowledge into society through street art.

Step into the vibrant world of Native Hawaiian artist Prime as he shares his profound vision of art as a vessel for Indigenous Knowledge and his latest collaboration with the Wise Ancestors team. In this podcast, we delve deep into Prime's artistic journey, exploring the intricate relationship between his creations and the rich cultural tapestry of the Native Hawaiian people. Join us as Prime paints a vivid picture of his creative process, weaving together contemporary artistry with traditional wisdom passed down through generations.

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Interview Transcript:

Aleks Smilek  00:05

Welcome to the Wise Ancestor podcast, dedicated to biodiversity conservation. Here, we'll discuss the importance of Indigenous Knowledge and its role in conserving our nature and species. This is your host, Aleksandra Smilek and today we are with Prime, a Native Hawaiian graffiti artist who combines Traditional Knowledge with a contemporary approach to art. Hello, Prime! 

Prime  00:35

Hello, let's go. 

Aleks Smilek  00:37

So as an artist, and a Native Hawaiian, do you believe that art plays a significant role in transmitting Indigenous Knowledge in the contemporary world? 

Prime  00:48

Absolutely. In the beginning, I didn't understand that concept. In the very beginning, it was about Hip Hop, it was about doing your thing, and representing where you're from in the Hip Hop culture and then over time, you know, I caught the attention of so many elders who took me under their wing, and molded me to understand that there's much more power in what we're doing than I actually realized. And so, as they started to take me down that path of understanding our culture and the role that art plays, the light bulb went on for me, and I see it every time I work with the community, every time we do a mural with wherever we're at, with that community, you can see the immediate impact. And then you can see the impact over time, right, because now, like, for example, we're in Hilo and I did a mural back in 2016, and in 2013. And now that I'm back 10 years later, people are still talking about it, they're still, they still share their emotions of experiencing the whole process. For me that like, wow, you know, you don't know all these things because I, I did it first, you know, I mean, I didn't have like a template before me, I'm the first, right, and so I'm the guinea pig, and I'm the roadmap for everybody else. And when I did this thing, I had to wait ten years, and no one's ever done it to look back twenty years, but I'll be that guy, you know, to look back twenty years from now and see the effects of this, this type of artwork and how it how it affects us as a Lahui, right, as a, as a nation as a community and how it brings us together and how it separates us, right, and how it inspires the next generation. So, being that I was the first, and then there was, you know, then the numbers started growing really, really slowly. Now it's like, I'm very, I'm almost 100% sure that those numbers are going to skyrocket in the next, you know, five to ten years and I'm excited for that, because I wonder how the art that I'm creating now is going to inspire the work to go forward even further with the technology coming out, with the native speakers coming out right, they're going to be the ones to like take it not just across the ocean,  but up into the, up into the space right they're gonna be the rocket ships- I'm just a locomotive.

Aleks Smilek  04:02

That's amazing. That means that like Hawaiian art is like evolving constantly and when you say like new technologies, do you have like any example, any input about like how artists now are evolving so there’re a lot of graffiti artists like following your path and, and creating their own art but if I understood you well, there is also like new technologies coming into the play and developing this particular Hawaiian art. 

Prime  04:41

Yeah, I mean, like in recent years, it's the, look at the NFT space, right, the NFT space, a lot of them don't really understand how it works. But you know, when we sit down and we talk to the classrooms or we talk to the community in general, and we kind of break it down for them to understand like this is another way for us to capture our IP. Right, because if you look at our past our past is, I'm from Oahu, and in Oahu, we have Waikiki and we all know that Waikiki was a disaster, right? It was good for everyone else except for the Hawaiians, right, because a lot of them were displaced, a lot of them had to move out of the community that they grew up in, and pushed out to make way for tourists and, and whatever they want, right. And so, you know, there's no memories, the memories are being lost as the generations go on. Well, with this technology, the generation, the memories can go on for generations and generations, because it's nonstop now. I mean, it's, it's on the blockchain forever. You know what I mean, and then, so that's what fascinates me is because the work that I'm doing today doesn't have to die when I die. It's going to stay on that digital space, or it'll have a digital imprint, forever and ever and ever, and I love that, because we have so much to, so much to catch up on as far as our pasts and then we have so much to look forward to, right. But where we're at right now is, is kind of in limbo where we're trying to hang on to our traditions, and fight for our right to live in our place and that, that distracts us from what's possible, yeah, so with this technology, I'm just using NFT as one example of many different technologies that we can use at our disposal, but my generation, they, we don't know that technology, as much as the kids that's growing up with this are gonna know it, so I'm really excited for that space. 

Aleks Smilek  07:10

That's very exciting and that's pretty cool that you've been talking about your IP. This is an amazing way to actually formulate it and so can you dive even more into how in your work you intertwine Hawaiian history and your practice as an artist? 

Prime  07:36

Yeah, so the first part of the process is to hear the story from the storyteller, right? I'm a different, separate, so I'm a storyteller, but I'm not the source storyteller. There's the source storyteller and then there's the interpreter storyteller and I'm more of the interpreter storyteller where I take this, the words of the source and I convert that to a visual, right? And then as many visuals as possible, right, so one example is, is like if we do a flower and a specific flower, and we talk to a flower expert, or somebody from a specific area, that specializes in this flower because they built a relationship over time, that's where I cannot go in and just paint a flower just to paint a flower because I don't have the type of relationship but somebody that does have that relationship, I can feel their emotions, I can feel their connectedness, I can feel their passion with the, whatever subject it is. And then from there, it's my job to take it and offer a buffet of options. You know what I mean? Not just one like, I'm not just saying, "Okay, this is the flower, and this is the direct interpretation of the flower," no, how do you, how do you create a visual image for smell? How do you create a, you know a visual image for wind, right, things that are non tangible things that we can't physically see, but we know exist, right? And so that's where as an artist, I've really honed in on my skill to interpret multiple levels of that subject, in different formats, whether it's a graphic style, whether it's a surreal style, as like that, when I look back at my career, I see 40 years, 50 years of experience over time, that has taught me, that has given me the tools to say, you know what, I think this will be better as a pencil drawing, or this will be better as you know as a pattern you know or something more graphic so I'm able to, you know, whip out my toolbox and say, "no, this, this is how we're going to use it and this is one way to interpret and this is another way to interpret". And then we let the community kind of pick which one they want.

Aleks Smilek  10:17

Amazing. That's actually, it's an amazing way of creating and that's offered me a perfect segue to my next question, because you recently have a collaboration between the scientist right and yourself for the collaboration with Wise Ancestor on the project focusing on the tree snail, and the merger of native species in Hawaii. So could you share your insight on the experience of developing this artistic project in collaboration with Wise Ancestors conservation scientists? 

Prime  10:56

Oh, my God, where do we start? Okay, so my first experience, right, is, okay, I'm working with scientists, so it's almost intimidating, because they're supposed to be the know it all. But they're just normal people, right. And so that, that kind of tones down the anxiety of expectation, right. And then, like, once I feel, what made it so good with the Wise Ancestors is that we're looking at each other at eye level. And it's not this way, or that way, it's, we're eye level. So that is the segue for us to communicate better on equal playing ground. I respect your expertise, and you respect mine, awesome, let's go. And then, you know, when the idea was presented to me, I had no idea, right? I had no clue that we had our own Indigenous snail, because my yard has all of the other snails that we're trying to get rid of and when I hear the story of George, that was the first one that I got. 

Aleks Smilek  12:07

George the snail, the tree snail.

Prime  12:08

George, the tree snail, yeah, and what a tragedy because, I mean, I learned about this story after he's gone and so I had to sleep on this and think about it a lot more like how am I going to present this and how many other options which, you know, the scientists were able to provide so many different options for me to look at and to me, for me to consider and that's the other, that's the other advantage of this collaboration, is I'm used to doing the research and I'm used to doing everything myself, but you have people that's already been in this for years now so that saves me time to just focus on thinking about the presentation. And I'm, I feel spoiled, to be honest, right? I feel like man if, if I could do this on every project, then life is going to be so much more sweeter and we can get more work done. 

Aleks Smilek  13:12

Yes. 

Prime  13:12

Right. When we, when the different communities come together and create these, you know, things like this project, I think we're going to move along quicker. And we're going to open the doors for a lot more collaboration to happen between different fields, right. So like, when I was thinking about this, one thing that kept coming to me is it was such a sad story,  I just kept feeling sad. So, when I feel that way, I look at how to turn things positive, right. That's how you go through life and for George it's like no, he's gone already, there's no happy ending, he's, he's done. So I decided to think in terms of alternate realities. What is the alternative if he was on a different plane and so that's why I presented this package of George being alive and having a family, he has a wife and four kids. 

Aleks Smilek  14:19

Yeah, exactly. So you personify the tree snail, you personify George that was the last tree snail actually, right, of this very particular native species from Hawaii, right, so yeah, that's fascinating. Like, can you talk more about this process of actually incarnating somehow, the tree snail and creating an entire family of the snails, assigning them their names, and unique attributes also right, on their shells? They had unique attributes and so you basically transformed them into distinct characters. Right? So yeah, it was amazing.

Prime  15:08

But, I was just having fun. Because of the sadness of that story, I wanted to give that alternate perspective, right. And the alternate perspective is George actually surviving and having this family and then becoming bountiful, right and then creating, you know, procreating and then creating multiple George's. And then when you know, like, just because of my art background, and I like to hide things in my artwork, sometimes, most times. And this one I just wanted to give each of them a birthmark. And the birthmark that I gave them represents a different section of Oahu and it's in their name. So there's George, and that's the thing, the other thing that I was thinking about a lot was, why is his name George? From Hawaii? 

Aleks Smilek  16:08

Yeah. 

Prime  16:09

Why is it not a Hawaiian name? That's why I decided to go with Keoki because Keoki translated to English is George. 

Aleks Smilek  16:17

Yeah.

Prime  16:17

Yeah, and so Keoki has a birthmark on his shell, right, as an ID, and it's the whole island of Oahu. His wife, his wife's name is Iwa from Iwalani and that's one of the sections of Oahu right, one of the big sections of Oahu and he has a, they have a son, right, one of them is named Waianae, the other son is named Waialua and then two younger twins, which is Ko'olaupoko and Ko'olauloa, those two are known as the mother, creator of the island, the female, then Waianae, the Waianae ridgeline is known as the father, right. So it connects for me, it's a personal connection to our place and to where we're from. And then I just, I gave it fun colors. I gave it like, their own identity, but there's some consistency with the faces and all of that, it's just a beginning, right. And we have, that's the thing, we have to start somewhere. The idea that we have this family in an alternate reality, I hope that people will not focus on the part where he's not here anymore, right, the extinction part but focus on perhaps looking at solutions, and these could be solutions for the other ones that's in danger. Yeah, so the ones that are extinct, okay, too late. But the ones that are endangered, hey look, this is an alternate reality of what could be if we joined forces and put our efforts towards making sure that they survive.

Aleks Smilek  18:09

That's amazing. Thank you so much, Prime, thank you so much for introducing us to Hawaiian arts through your lens, through your practice and also focusing on this amazing story about the tree snails that you just released. Thank you for listening, the Wise Ancestor podcast.