From murals to pencil drawings, sculpture to his illustrated, Pacific-focused, alternative-reality history Polyfantastica, Enos’ goal with all his work is to educate and instill self-reflection—whether on a personal scale or a societal one.

Enos arrived on the art scene via his own route. The son of a prolific community organizer and a nurse, Enos and his three brothers (none of which completed high school) were raised far from the city in Oʻahu’s rural Mākaha community. It was there that Enos’ imagination was nurtured through the world of Dungeons & Dragons, comic books and science fiction.

“I’m about to go exponential this year in terms of the number of shows and opportunities; places to tell stories and ways to tell stories and people to tell stories with. And that’s what I’m really excited about: getting other people doing exactly what I’m doing,” Enos says. “Because I am enjoying myself so much that I feel guilty.”

Today he is the first artist-in-residence at the historic Hawaii Theatre. Ruth Bolan, the theatre's new director, wants to combine Enos’ rootsy, westside sensibility with the edginess of New York City through massive mural projects all over the theater. Enos plans on going back to connections he made with immigrant and working class families in Kalihi, many of whom are Micronesian, to draw out inspiration for the project.

“I want to have something that talks about militarism in the Pacific,” he says. “Something that addresses why these Micronesian families are forced to come here and shows a path toward empathy for them. We have to see them and their struggle and displacement in your own struggle; then they become more than just ‘those people.’ Instead they’re simply more of ‘us’ arriving.”

Enos would one day love to direct film and television as well, “like Kurosawa but with a Hawaiian vantage point,” he says. “Or maybe a mini-series about an ancient Hawaiian detective who has to solve a murder mystery, and in the background you learn about the different kapu and other cultural things like that. The idea is to really start looking at the Pacific as one third of the Earth’s surface that is really misunderstood, and a region that really needs to have its voice amplified.”

Pointing to a pair of two-foot high models he’s made out of polyurethane, he describes a follow-up project to one he did for the 2015 Contact show at the Honolulu Museum of Art. The models look like something out of Robotech (1982–84)—with which Enos grew up—or Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), both Japanese animated television shows that feature giant robots (“Mecha”) and the terrible alien monsters they must combat (Guillermo del Toro borrowed heavily from the latter with his 2013 film Pacific Rim).

“The project features these anthropomorphic representations of corporate brands as sort of giant, transformer, bad-guy looking monsters—they’re a visual metaphor for the layers and layers of impact that globalization has on our lives,” says Enos.

“Being hyper-relevant is really important to me, and I want to apply that idea to some very familiar brands, like the National Football League and Pepsi and all those other wonderful things. So one of these monsters might be a Washington Redskins one, with all the right colors on him and everything. But then there’s a caption written on his wing or something that states a simple fact like, ‘American football was originally designed as a way to represent how Native Americans were pushed from their land.’ So think about that next time you watch football. Or maybe don’t watch football—yeah, I’m serious. The kind of change that needs to happen is cataclysmic, for the corporations at least. But it’ll be fantastic over here.

“One thing, always, with my art is that it’s always super subversive,” he adds with a roguish wink.

Through the whirlwind of information, goals and ideas, an overarching theme anchors Enos’ energy: “If you make your idealism into your hobby then, at the end of your life, even if nothing ever happens, you still had fun.”

Make The Invisible Visible

Enos sees art as an intrinsically important pillar of society; a way for us to put a check on out-of-control aspects of our own human nature—things like consumerism or militarism or environmental usurpation—and to challenge false and damaging narratives about people and place. Hawaiʻi’s colonial history makes this particularly important to a Native Hawaiian artist like Enos.

“How can we demonstrate the idea that there is a way to heal the narrative of a place; to heal the story of a place; to heal the story that we tell ourselves that defines who we are?” Enos wonders. “And there is a narrative—there’s a real narrative—that’s floating out there independent of what others have written about us. And that narrative will change, depending on the nature of our society. But I want to start that narrative right now. Art has such an important role to play in that. By contrast, when I see art that is not helpful, I see it as lazy art. Not necessarily technically lazy, but it’s not really contributing to the discussion. It’s not trying to make the invisible visible.”

Enos’ art is about making history enticing, interesting and terrifying—but also hopeful. And this is important in educating and spreading awareness, particularly among the young, about important issues.

“Because woe betide any society whose kids don’t care about history. If history class isn’t what people are showing up for, then you’re doomed to repeat it: and that applies both to society repeating its failures and to you having to repeat your history class,” he laughs.

What this means in a Hawaiʻi-based context is moʻolelo—storytelling. The nature of good storytelling is an important core, both for helping people to see the hidden forces that shape our society today and for illuminating a path toward charting, integrating and sustaining possible futures where those forces no longer hold sway over us.

Enos says there’s an opportunity to grow a thriving creative industry in Hawaiʻi, and it starts by taking advantage of all the different ways we can tell stories. “Because, when someone connects with a particular storytelling medium—the right one for them—I’ve seen how powerful that can be. And if the connection to the audience is powerful, then the response is better and there’s more opportunity for creatives to thrive.”

It’s a natural cycle that feeds itself and is completely sustainable. To Enos, sustainability also means being able to control your own story; not having to import your own dreams or identity.

“Self-sustaining means you have food, water, clothing, shelter, security and art and culture and identity and all those things,” he says. “Because those are the things that unify us and create a sustained society. Sustainability is a continuous song, not something with an end point like ‘bam, we’re sustainable now all of a sudden.’ The art is just a way of teaching people how to sing that song.”

And who better to target with this kind of lateral thinking than the young people who will one day lead our society? Enos imagines kids racing to school in excitement because their curriculum incorporates art and games. When crucial information is intertwined with entertainment and creativity, suddenly it becomes very appealing.

“That’s exactly what our ancestors did: mix the historical with the fanciful within their moʻolelo—and I mean all of our ancestors, not just ancient Hawaiians,” says Enos. “You go back far enough and you can’t separate the dragons from the historical events. There’s a reason people remember the stories about King Arthur so well.”

Enos recently finished a large scale mural project in Nānākuli with PALS (Place-based After-school Literacy Support)—an after-school literacy program out of the University of Hawaiʻi run by Dr. Kay Fukuda that saw massive community engagement. “It was like the same response a thirsty person has when they get to drink water,” Enos reflects. “The kids feel trusted because they’re given brushes and amazing art happens on those walls.”

Concurrently, Enos has been working on projects with the PALS program to develop curriculum based on games, art and even computer coding. Thinking as a designer, an artist and a writer, Enos wants to tailor a curriculum around local issues that the kids face everyday so that, when they solve problems in the classroom, it mirrors real life problems they’ve experienced.

“Ask the kids what they’re struggling with. They’ll tell you they want mom and dad to be home earlier; they don’t want them to have to fight so much over money—and then we will design curriculum around that,” he says. “That way when you come to school, you know you’re solving a real problem that matters to you.”

Enos considers the sci-fi novel Ender’s Game (1985), in which children are placed in a model that teaches them to solve the very real problems of space combat. “And then they hand the actual control of the fleet over to the kids and they win the war,” he says. “One of the coolest things about that book is that it shows that kids are capable—more capable, in fact, than adults—of solving these problems with brilliant, unorthodox workarounds that adults never would have thought of.

“Having a critical mass of young people—and at an earlier and earlier age in each successive generation—feeling civically engaged and involved; already knowing that there’s a piece of this book we call life that they have to write; that they are important—that’s critical to the health of our society as a whole.”

Mark-Making

Enos brings up an old cartoon from the ‘70s called Pogo, which features a number of animal characters living in a swamp. Creator Walt Kelly designed a poster for the first Earth Day in 1970, and it shows the main character, Pogo the possum, in his swamp, but the swamp is full of trash. The caption reads: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

“We are our final conundrum,” comments Enos. “It’s important to try and tackle all the other physical mysteries that need to be solved, but we have already come across the biggest mystery, which is our own self, and our own desires and all the frailties of the human condition.

“I think, often, there are battles to be fought; there are real enemies out there. But a lot of energy gets exhausted on stuff that’s not that important. For example, on your way down from protesting on the mountain [Mauna Kea], don’t go and stop at 7-11 to buy a Heineken. Don’t go McDonald’s. Go back to your garden and farm and find every possible way to not give America your money. Not only is that a more impactful way to protest, it’s one that’s quiet. It’s quiet resistance. It’s passive resistance. It doesn’t require a tremendous amount of networking, but it builds capacity so everyone is collectively doing these things.

“Sometimes we go with the easy fight. We say, ‘I can’t solve this huge, overarching conundrum, but I can at least stop those guys from building that telescope there.’ Important—it’s all important. But, by degrees of importance, the mountain is very old; the stars are very old—so both those conversations can wait, quite frankly. They’re both really important. But go walk just a few yards from this studio and sit with any of the dozens of homeless families that are out there on the sidewalk, and you start to think, ‘how dare we pat ourselves on the back?’ There’s still such a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done that nobody should be patting anyone on the back. At least not until after another two or three generations-worth of hard work.

“We are actually the scuff marks at the threshold of the door, or the scar marks along the highway where the cars have crashed. That’s what we really are. ‘Cause the car is gone, but it’s the marks that we leave behind us that matter. That’s a kind of art too.”