Artist Solomon Enos created public murals with Marshallese schoolchildren in the RMI and Honolulu.
The murals were designed to empower the children who participated and reinforce their connections to Marshallese culture and community, as well as engaging the attention of a wider public. Local newspaper reports on the creation of the murals were a source of pride for the students and their teachers.
Read more about Solomon’s designs for the murals and see photos of the process:
Ejit Elementary School, Majuro Atoll, RMI
Students of Ejit Elementary School worked with Solomon on two murals, one on the side of a classroom, and another on the school ablution block, Both include images of the detonation of the ‘Bravo’ thermonuclear bomb on 1 March 1954. The massive fireball that accompanied the blast, glowing orange, features on the school’s uniforms.
Read more about the impacts of nuclear testing: https://www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/marshallese-displacement/.
On the first mural, which is visible from outside the school gates, the mushroom cloud of the Bravo bomb becomes a human head — half skull, half living face. Solomon explained that while death is a dominant legacy of Bikini’s nuclear history, the gathering of the community’s narratives creates a space in which people can tell ‘the next story’, a potentially positive narrative that can set the path for the future.
Students working on murals at Ejit Elementary School. Photos © Christine Germano.
The second Ejit mural covered several walls of the school’s ablution block. The outlines of the mushroom cloud drawn by Solomon left space for the children to write and add colour. Some children wrote personal testimonies on the mural, including accounts of the nuclear era and ways of life passed down to them from their parents and grandparents. Others wrote reflections on their experience of working with Solomon and the MAP team.
Honolulu Central Middle School, Hawaii
The mural features a large pattern of interlinked human faces, merging the Marshallese greeting iakwe with the Hawaiian greeting aloha. The faces have mysterious eyes and rainbow foreheads, overlapping to convey the interconnected and universality of human life.
Iakwe / ‘you are a rainbow’
Aloha / ‘you are in the presence of the breath’
Both greetings say much more than just ‘hello’. They acknowledge a deeper humanity. By emphasising the commonality of aloha and iakwe, the Honolulu mural expresses the potential to transcend the stigma suffered by the Marshallese community in the US.
Solomon began the mural by sketching outlines of the faces in black. Then the children of Honolulu Central Middle School applied colourful stippling using acrylic paint pens. Invited members of their families, school staff, and community volunteers joined in.
Students working on murals at Honolulu Central Middle School. Photos © Christine Germano.
The mural is situated on a highly visible public wall that fronts the school. The bold design is clearly visible to passers-by on the busy Pali Highway. The location of the mural allowed students to connect with the communities surrounding their school, as many pedestrians stopped to admire and ask questions during the sunny Saturday in May 2017 when the mural’s creation was underway.
Majuro Cooperative School, Majuro, RMI
The murals were painted on three adjacent shipping containers made available to MAP by the Kramer family, founders of the construction company Pacific International Inc. The containers are right next to the main road that runs from one end of Majuro to the other, an ideal location for showcasing the children’s work to the wider community.
The first mural was based on traditional Marshallese stick charts, aids to navigation that record the wind and wave patterns that connect the islands and atolls. The mural celebrates the elegant design of stick charts and Marshallese navigating traditions.
Solomon said the mural ‘brings prominence to the cultural knowledge’ of the Marshall Islands, and was intended to inspire and prepare Marshallese to ‘go out into the world again’. It contextualises Marshallese displacement and migration within centuries-old traditions of inter-island and transoceanic travel. It is also intended to foster solidarity between Marshall Islanders and the wider ‘family’ of indigenous Pacific islanders.
Making murals on shipping containers in Majuro. Photos © Christine Germano.
The second mural at the Cooperative School includes images and symbols that recurred in the poetry written by the children in workshops run by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner. Solomon prepared basic designs in outline and invited the children to embellish them. Some of them inscribed excerpts from their poems in and around the outlines, while others wrote new pieces reflecting on their relationships with the environment and Marshallese culture.
Incorporating poetry into the murals. Photos © Christine Germano.
The third mural depicts human faces whose hair morphs into ocean waves, representing Marshallese ancestors. This mural depicts the idea that as the diaspora grows and islanders establish communities in other parts of the world, their ancestors will be with them wherever they go. Solomon invited the children to write personal expressions of who they are, to reinforce their connections to their ancestors.
Writing personal testimonials on the murals. Photos © Christine Germano.
This text was adapted by Olivia Ferguson from an essay written by Dr Michelle Keown and Solomon Enos.
All photographs on this page are © Christine Germano.