A satirical workout video has been making waves across the Pacific.
The Hawaiʻi art piece is called “20 minute workout,” and it’s featured at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The exhibition is the longest-running survey of American art.
The video features a group of dancers in spandex workout gear stretching in front of the Captain Cook Monument at Kealakekua Bay on Hawaiʻi Island, while electronic music blares in the background.
An artist initiative called kekahi wahi is behind the video, which was part of a bigger project to revisit the bay and the monument.
The Conversation spoke to five members of kekahi wahi — Maddie Biven, Drew Broderick, Sean Connelly, Sancia Nash and Alec Singer — to learn more about the video.
“At the time, there was a lot of energy that was circulating around commemorative spaces and monuments across the continental United States,” Broderick said. “A lot of Confederate histories were being challenged, questioned, amended, removed, erased, and so the project was really a way to try to bring some of that energy to Hawaiʻi and help artists here reimagine public space and what we were celebrating, and what we weren't."
The project invited several artists to conduct research around the 27-foot-high obelisk at Kealakekua Bay, and from there, the “20 minute workout” project emerged.
The film uses elements of parody and satire to portray Hawaiʻi’s complicated history.
“I think the experience of being down at Kealakekua Bay and also the experience of watching the film is kind of trying to have the viewer feel the simultaneity of the layers of history that are felt and maybe also the contradictions that you might feel being in a place like Kealakekua that is a wahipana, it's a sacred place that also has this really intense kind of overtourism that is felt,” Biven shared.
The group emphasizes joy, friendship and the importance of place as the foundation for the video.
“20 minute workout” is on view March 8 through Aug. 23 at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
This story aired on The Conversation on May 18, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
