Tending Relations: Lisa Reihana’s Lei Epic

Abstract

Garlands thread their way through histories and cultures, from Grecian laurel wreaths, to pagan floral crowns, to strings of sacred orange marigolds adorning the temples of India. But it is Polynesian cultures of the Pacific that are definitively associated with threaded flowers, known as lei in Hawaii, with variations on that word existing in Tahiti and the Cook Islands, and other words denoting the floral garland elsewhere across the Moana. This piece of text for Garland intends to be a garland itself, stringing together a series of ideas like blossoms. Bright or faded, buds or full-blown blooms, my garland threads its way through the lei as a form, Lisa Reihana’s epic video at the Venic..