Kakaʻako
Kakaʻako is Honolulu's urban mural capital — a former industrial neighborhood between downtown and Waikiki that has been transformed by the POW! WOW! Hawaii festival into one of the most photographed mural districts in the United States. The annual festival brings 100+ artists from across the Pacific Rim and beyond to paint walls across the neighborhood, producing a density of outdoor art that spans every scale from alley-width to twelve-story building faces. The work reflects Hawaii's ecological and cultural complexity at a level of sophistication rare among festival mural programs.
Featured Artists
All artists →Estria
"Kamaʻāina" — meaning "child of the land" — is Estria's multi-story portrait of Native Hawaiian identity in the context of Honolulu's rapid development, rendered in a style that synthesizes traditional Hawaiian kapa textile patterns with the scale and technique of contemporary mural practice, a work that asserts indigenous cultural presence in a neighborhood being rebuilt for luxury condominiums.
Wyland
"Pacific Reef" is Wyland's Honolulu masterwork, a building-scale documentation of the Hawaiian coral reef ecosystem — the cauliflower coral, the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, the Hawaiian green sea turtles, the reef sharks — rendered in Wyland's luminous underwater style on a twelve-story building face visible from the Ward Avenue approach to Kakaʻako.
Kelsey Montague
"Nā Pali" redesigns Montague's signature interactive wing format for the Hawaiian context — wings built from ʻōhiʻa lehua blossoms, ʻiʻiwi feathers, and pāpahanaumokuākea coral — an interactive composition that has become one of the most photographed single pieces in all of POW! WOW! Hawaii's catalog, drawing visitors specifically to Kakaʻako for the photograph.