The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

80 Solomon Enos Polyfantastica At a time when many indigenous traditions are being both regenerated and lost, Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos is passionately committed to reinstating his culture’s rich and vibrant traditions of storytelling. Enos’s graphic novel Polyfantastica imagines 40 millennia of voyage and evolution in pursuit of peace and harmony. 1 The tale is framed in a globalised and ultimately virtual world where solutions and salvation are proffered for a humanity wracked by war, disease and ecological devastation. It is of its time, aiming to reach a generation raised on multiple media: Western comic strips and super heroes; Japanese manga and animation; science fiction and fantasy books; online gaming and war play; and, increasingly, the extended form of the graphic novel. Polyfantastica plays out through four epic 10 000-year periods known as Kuu , Lono , Kanaloa and Kaane , names which also denote Hawaiian gods. It is, in large part, Aquarian in its scope — oceanic environments are both battleground and healing sanctuary. Water, in particular fresh water, appears to be the ultimate sacred grail in the quest, as it brings life to universes and galaxies far beyond earth. Enos’s graphic style is lively and draws on many sources. He cites fantasy and science fiction writers Robert E Howard, JRR Tolkien, Arthur C Clarke and Frank Herbert as models for his visionary hybrid bestiary, fused with manga and indigenous Polynesian oral traditions. Equally, however, there are echoes of gladiatorial warriors, Doctor Who’s repertoire of aliens and mutants, and the ethereal spectres of William Blake’s illustrated poems. Such mythic narratives, of course, have been told and re-told, in many forms and in many cultures, for thousands of years. Some have been inscribed in epic sagas, while others remain as a residue in various indigenous traditions — like an echo or a whisper that only the initiated would recognise. In many cultural traditions, origin myths anthropomorphise the immense energies and mysteries of the earth and the universe into gods and beings of superhuman and divine powers. In the Western tradition, certain aspects of ancient pagan and classical myths of origin — albeit modified — found their way into Judeo–Christian beliefs. Other great, mythopoeic narratives of heroism or of voyages of conquest, and tales of lust, betrayal, love, transformation and redemption, have continued to be relevant today. When the extremes and vulnerabilities of human behaviour remain tragic, treacherous or heroic, the tales of Ovid and Aeschylus still sustain repeated interpretation and adaption to stage, screen, song and story. Solomon Enos’s storyboards, painted in gouache and washes of watercolour, are rich with detail. Their development manifests in graphite smudges, underdrawing and marginal annotations. Fantastic ships, vessels and weapons are itemised and named. His cast of characters and villains is established at the outset, like the genealogy of a nineteenth-century Russian novel, but with the appearance of spectacular ‘transformers’ and shape-shifters: there is Kuu , the crustacean warrior god; Lono , the god of peace and agriculture of Amazonian proportions; Kanaloa , the armoured oceanic voyager; and Kaane , a futuristic fugitive and illusory being, adorned in what appear to be shards of glass or crystal. Environmental destruction wrought by warring tribes is at the heart of the story. Compared to the apocalyptic threat of nuclear annihilation, which preoccupied both science fiction and real-life narratives of the 1980s, global ecological catastrophe now appears to be a real and present danger. In recent decades alone, events with disastrous consequences — such as the gas leak at the Union Carbide-operated pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal (1984), the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), and the devastating toxic spill from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska (1989) — punctuate a history of cumulative, permanent and often unreported environmental damage. According to Enos: Polyfantastica is many things, it is largely driven by a desire to shift our current critically unsustainable and horribly violent state of co-existence on earth by diverting mainstream media away from the crippling societal icons of fear, greed, inadequacy and insecurity . . . Wasn’t there something that we were working on before we got distracted by organised religion and war and plastic? 2 Solomon Enos’s Polyfantastica is motivated by hope and faith in the power of regeneration. His culture and traditions tell of a time when ‘There is no conflict here, not anymore. No warfare. No pestilence or starvation. Yet, each adult intimately knows them all — through a drop of water. Through memory’. 3 David Burnett Endnotes 1 Enos’s serial comic was published weekly in the ‘Island Life’ section of The Honolulu Advertiser , Hawaii’s largest daily newspaper, between November 2006 and October 2007. 2 Excerpt from ‘Overview’, in correspondence to Maud Page, Queensland Art Gallery, 2 December 2008. 3 Excerpt from narrative text to accompany images, in correspondence to Maud Page.