The show title, “Duty-Free Paradise,” offers a glimpse of content through wordplay, punning to self-describe this solo exhibition by Lani Asunción at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA), that continues through April 13.
Achieving a great exhibition layout is a subtle thing. “Duty-Free Paradise” benefits from being presented in kunsthalle-style, which involves clean, uncluttered placement so that complex ideas can emerge to reveal layers of meaning.
In this case, there is a feeling of space, or breathing room, which benefits site-lines of association facilitating absorption of content. The scale of imagery in relation to the space is right. Credit for successful exhibition planning belongs to curator J.R. Uretsky and Asunción as cohorts on this project, a bristling term sometimes used now in the arts for working collaboratively.
Visually, “Duty-Free Paradise” showcases the natural beauty of Hawai’i by incorporating aerial photography and video taken either by drone or in a helicopter fly-by. The stock footage gathered by Asunción from Hawai’i tourist companies has been re-contextualized into new videos created for this show. The imagery features blue ocean, volcanic beaches, crashing waves interspersed with verdant landscape, all very alluring, sensual and typical of Hawai’i.
It should be said that the Asunción’s messaging involves the darker side of this beauty by exploring conceptually the cultural cost of environmental appropriation; Hawai’i’s colonial past, the servitude of its resources,
still informs the present.