There Are No Billboards in Hawaiʻi
Vincent Bercasio
2026 Visual Art Grant Recipient
There Are No Billboards in Hawai’i is a photographic survey of Hawaiian land undergoing varying types of industrial transformation in service of modern infrastructure and the mili-tourism industrial complex. Sites undergoing drastic material change will be placed in conversation with commercial imagery exploiting the Hawaiian landscape along with the kūpuna, community members and cultural practitioners who contend directly with Hawai’i’s urban development. Through an investigative photo series, mixed-media collages, and a brief experimental documentary, I ask these questions: What kinds of land extraction have been normalized, de-politicized, and are ongoing since the completion of the H3? Who has been directly affected by extreme land transformation, and what are their stories? And lastly, how does the use of the Hawaiian landscape in advertising material contribute to the degradation of the land?
Vincent Bercasio is a filmmaker, photographer, and artist from Pearl City, O’ahu with Bicolano ancestry. Vincent’s work explores modern alienation, urban sprawl, waste accumulation and the abandonment of the natural world. Through his photographs and films, he illustrates the relation between our increasingly artificial environments and the eroding conditions—mental, spiritual, physical and otherwise—of the people living within them. His background in commercial work informs the visual language of his imagery, often employing ironic advertising aesthetics to emphasize the tension between standardized technique and subject matter.
He collaborates with artists across the realms of contemporary art, fashion, narrative filmmaking and social justice. Recent projects include growth (2024), an experimental short film examining the relations between limu’s fragile ecosystem and the urban environment that threatens it; cinematography for Tiare Ribeaux’s Ho’ōla Ka Wai Iā Maui — He Moemoeā (Water Returns Life to Maui - A Dream) (2025), and cinematography / editing for Brigitte Leilani Axelrode’s Memory As Missionary Position.