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Cartagena in Honolulu

It’s always apparently a very good thing to have a trip to Hawaii planned, because all of your friends will suddenly become very jealous. It’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, by most accounts. The idea of spending time in a place where there’s so much ocean, and so much natural splendor is enough to cause waves of relaxation to start coursing through the body. But the anticipation is nothing compared to the real thing, and Honolulu is an extraordinary experience. Great hotels are just the beginning, framing your time here in a splendor and luxury that are hard to find anywhere else on the planet.

For all of the images of Hawaii as a place that’s relatively disconnected from the rest of the world, with the usual tropes of life on an island, Honolulu is remarkably cosmopolitan. The news of the world certainly reaches here, and sometimes stems from here, and there is a long history of mutual influence between the local community and the rest of the world. This is true for the cuisine, the music, and the visual art, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to find the works of Victor Cartagena on display here.

This visual artist is based in San Francisco and comes from El Salvador, and his work has been reaching wide audiences for a number of years. One of his big collaborations is with the Bay Area performance group Secos y Mojados+http://www.secosymojados.net/Players.html . This is a fitting introduction to his own work, since the sensibilities are very similar. Their performances interrogate the border, physical and metaphorical, using mixed media to explore the divisions of self that happen on the way from one place to another. Like in his own solo work, there is a very lively sense of humor, serving to make visible the underlying themes that ask some of the most important questions about the world as it is right now. In Honolulu, with its own particularly complicated history of culture and movement, there is a natural fit with unexpected collisions of meaning.

Related posts:

1. Stay in Fashion, Honolulu
2. Waikiki Has the Best Beaches
3. Stress Relief: A Hawaii Vacation

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