Koehana series - "Lei Niho Palaoa"

Ink on vellum. 18x24" unframed. Free shipping.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The Koehana series is an expression of my journey to connect with my identity as ʻōiwi. As a native Hawaiian in diaspora a great deal of my experience with my culture has been through a colonizer’s lens. These objects have a deep and significant origin but, like my identity, they have been tokenized, enshrined and put on display out of context. Passed from hand to hand and filtered over and over so that I cannot trace their history clearly.

This body of work acts as a recontextualization - objects reassembled line by line to form a new kind of koehana, or artifact. One in which their moʻolelo is established and I can see myself within. That despite their tenuous and fragile connection, they relate nonetheless the long lineage of my people that has until now remained scattered and obscured.