Joseph Maida‘s “New Natives” opened at Daniel Cooney Fine Art this week. The following images are a preview of his show.
Decidedly homoerotic and uncomfortable, Maida intently juxtaposes the bodies of various ethnically mixed men from Hawaii. Maida scouted his subjects through the use of social media, and they are photographed within their local terrain surrounding Honolulu.
The contrast of the awkwardly posed male bodies with the beautiful natural landscape invites a dialogue between Hawaii’s cultural history with the contemporary masculine identity of its men. Bringing up questions of colonialism, gentrification and cultural fusion (both ideologically and biologically), Maida’s New Natives presents a glimpse to Hawaii’s present with a firm grip of its conflicted past.
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