Jennifer Steinkamp

Jennifer Steinkamp’s large-scale, immersive digital installations are hyper-attractive but go beyond surface conviviality as the artist brings an unsettling intellectual substance to her enticing imagery. Her work prompts reflection on the idea and meaning of beauty itself in both the natural and human spheres as well as questioning perceptions of ephemerality and permanence. Steinkamp’s more than thirty-year practice is distinguished by her ongoing adoption of cutting-edge technology, drawing inspiration from diverse sources that include cinema, video gaming, and computer animation. She received her BFA in 1989 and MFA in 1991 from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California.

Steinkamp has commented that her visualization of beauty allows her and her audience to dwell on the experience of being alive, often expressed in her work through a spiritual connection with nature, whether looking at how trees communicate with each other in the series Blind Eye (2018–19), exploring the formation of electricity in thunder-clouds in Winter Fountain (2017–18), or finding wonder in a possible message from the universe in 6EQUJ5 (2012). Other works take the human world as their subject: an interactive VR work titled Womb (2019) depicts ovaries as tempting fruit that audiences can ‘pick’, whereupon the fruit is deleted from the visual field—a commentary on the continuing war over ownership of women’s bodies. For Impeach (2019), the artist humorously portrays suicidal fruits (including the peach) as they throw themselves against an invisible wall, mimicking human protestors.

For HT22 Steinkamp contributes a site-specific digital installation that references an Hawaiian historical legacy. In 1891 Queen Lili‘uokalani established The Royal Flower Garden in Pauoa, not far from Iolani Palace. After the overthrow of the Queen in 1893, the garden was renamed Uluhaimalama and became a focal point for her supporters, not only to plant and tend the garden but also to support the deposed monarch, despite it being illegal for Hawaiians to gather during that time. During the Queen’s unlawful imprisonment in 1895, flowers from Uluhaimalama were brought to her daily, providing comfort; a ritual that continued after her release until her death in 1917. In 1918 the provisional government destroyed the garden—knowing its significance and meaning for the Hawaiian people—dividing the land and, somewhat symbolically, turning it into several cemeteries.

Steinkamp takes the Queen’s handwritten inventory of flowers, titled ‘Flowers for Uluhaimalama’, which assigns a flower to each supporter, as the basis for her HT22 work. A newspaper notice of 1894, posted by then-caretaker Mrs Nakanealoha Mana, invited people to attend the planting, noting, ‘the importance of the efforts will be seen by having your name by your flower placed by the association; and you will also breathe in the bracing air of the upland forests.’

The Queen’s linking of particular flowers with individuals has a synergy with Steinkamp’s interest in the connections found between the natural and human realms. The siting of the work at Iolani Palace allows the audience to appreciate the relationship between the ephemeral, symbolic flowers, and the historical legacy of the building, in a sense collapsing the passage of time.

NOTE: This installation can be viewed from King Street from dusk to midnight February 16 - 18, 2022 at Iolani Palace.