Melissa Chimera

The work references Hawai‘i’s last operating sugar mill in Puunene on the island of Maui which closed in 2016, ending more than one hundred years of sugar cultivation on the island. Chimera renders intricate gears, chains and machinery of the cane hauler trucks which were once ubiquitous across the islands. The network of sugar mills across Hawai‘i not only brought the artist’s grandparents who were field laborers. The industry also transformed tens of thousands of acres thereby displacing Hawaiian subsistence farms, native farmers and the resident endemic plants and animals dependent upon these natural areas.