Remittance
Melissa Chimera
November 20, 2021 - February 2022
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Running until February 2022, Above the Equator is open by appointment for in-person and virtual visits.
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Above the Equator announces the first solo artist exhibition in their Hilo, HI project space, featuring paintings by Melissa Chimera, running from November 20 - February 2022.
Remittance draws its title and inspiration from the global remittance economy fueled by migrants and immigrants. The works in this show thematically “explore the physical and emotional journeys undertaken by documented and undocumented California and Hawai‘i Filipina/o immigrants,” according to Chimera. In her own words, the “paintings honor migrants supporting multiple generations through their labors abroad while inhabiting the literal and imagined liminal spaces between nations.”
Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Chimera references her own family history as a descendant of Filipino and Lebanese immigrants, often with a nod to the history of Hawaiʻi and migration, predating statehood.
The Provider, The Dissident, The Caretaker and Remittance are all new paintings created in 2021, drawing from Chimera’s own research and interviews with undocumented migrants from the Philippines. Highlighting the untold stories of how foods make it to table, Chimera shares through her interviews with contract fishermen based out of Honolulu Harbor who are permitted to legally fish and supply Hawaiʻi restaurants and tables with some of the world’s most expensive fish, but cannot step foot on U.S. soil. She also shares the story of a Filipino human rights activist seeking political asylum after his wife was murdered and a beloved caretaker who overstayed her visa while caring for her mother as she battled cancer.
In conversation with this new series from 2021, Chimera is exhibiting paintings of her Filipino ancestors who immigrated to the Hawaiian archipelago over one hundred years ago with Andrea Under the Moringa Tree (2018), Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo (2018) and her own self-portrait, Inheritance (2020).
Chimera’s intricate paintings consist of sewing photographic images and texts from government immigration documents with oil painting, ink and paper on linen. An unexpected element of the literal and ephemeral converge, as she combines elements of realism with her protagonists being central to her work, along with mythological-like objects that lend an otherworldly, dreamline quality to her work.
Chimera shares “my paintings imply a nebulous sense of belonging that describes the absence of a permanent homeland and the sacrifices many endure for the benefit of future generations. I sometimes situate an individual—my grandparents, Honolulu fishermen, a Filipino political dissident—within an ecosystem of political and environmental allusions to consider ways in which our self-perceptions are shaped by each region’s unique institutions and ecology.”
Running until February 2022, Above the Equator is open by appointment for in-person and virtual visits.
The Artist
Melissa Chimera
Chimera (b. 1972) is a conservationist and Honolulu native of Lebanese and Filipino ancestry. She studied natural resources management at the University of Hawai‘i, a world epicenter for plant and animal extinction and worked for two decades as a conservation manager. She keeps a studio on Hawai‘i Island where she lives with her husband and son.
Chimera’s work investigates species extinction, globalization and human migration. Her most recent project as artist and curator is The Far Shore: Navigating Homelands for the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI). The exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War and the beginning of the upheaval of the Arab World. The contemporary art and poetry of The Far Shore concerns a highly politicized issue--Arab immigration to America--viewed through the lens of the personal and familial.
Chimera’s solo shows include Migrant (2019) at the Honolulu Museum of Art, Agents of Change (Hui No‘eau Visual Arts Center, Maui), and Splendor: Portraits of the Natural World (ARTS at Marks Garage). In 2009, Chimera was commissioned with her mother poet Adele Ne Jame to create Inheritance: Reclaiming Land and Spirit, a poetry-painting collaboration for the Sharjah Bienniale 9, United Arab Emirates. Other collaborations include Moving Cultures, a collaborative art-making train ride across 2,000 miles of China in 2009. She has exhibited her work across Asia, the Middle East and North America.
Chimera is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award and a finalist for the 2019 Lange-Taylor Prize, Duke University Documentary Studies. Her work resides in the collections of the Arab American National Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Hawai'i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts.