Simon Soon

In 1881, the King of Hawaiʻi, Kalākaua, undertook a diplomatic and economic voyage that was animated by his interest in coordinating Malay resistance against European and American intruders in the Pacific. This would ultimately prove unsuccessful, with Hawaiʻi remaining subject to the destructive colonial thralls of the US empire. King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels, Simon Soon’s series of carved panels, captures four incidents of this diplomatic exchange premised by political recognition and imagined kinship across the Asia Pacific rim, loosely based on William Armstrong’s travelogue Around the World with a King (1904). In the first panel, we see King Kalākaua’s visit to San Francisco, while in the next, he is shown in Japan, visiting a Shinto shrine. There he drew the Japanese emperor aside and suggested that just as Japanese emperors were said to descend from the Sun Goddess, so too did the Hawaiʻian Kings. The third panel shows his visit to Siam before, in the fourth and final panel, King Kalākaua is depicted in a reception hall of the Johor Sultan’s palace. The King’s valet is shown wearing the ceremonial feathered cloak, while the two monarchs greet each other warmly, recognizing each other as long lost brothers. To commemorate the renewal of kinship, King Kalākaua receives a green and gold Qur’an. Soon’s reliefs were designed and carved by collaborators in the Philippines, master woodworkers connected not just to a long tradition of religious statuary but also to iconic dioramas representing Filipino history. Through this connection, the panels take poetic license in connecting the political ambitions of King Kalākaua to the first political uprising in Asia, the Philippine Revolution of 1896.

King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels (2018) commissioned by Para Site HK, supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines, co-produced by Simon Soon and HKW, 2024–25

Work in the exhibition: Simon Soon in collaboration with RJ Camacho, Antonia Aguilar, Lauro Penamante, Arnold Flores, Joseph de Ramos, King Kalakaua’s Hawaiian Travels (2018), timber, 50 × 66 × 5.5 cm