INSTALLATIONS
Noteworthy installations, art shows, and collaborative projects.
“HAWAIIAN ENOUGH”
Hawaiians and locals alike are often burdened by questions of identity. Questions that reduce an entire people—their histories, relationships, and lived experiences—to a percentage: “How much Hawaiian are you?” For many of us, blood quantum becomes something we inherit alongside our genealogy, a measure others use to decide whether we belong, whether we’re “Hawaiian Enough.”
But our ancestors do not love us in fractions.
It doesn’t matter how much or how little Hawaiian blood runs through our veins. They know us not by percentages, but by the lives we choose to live; by the ways we care for one another; by how we honor our culture, our language, and our ʻāina.
This body of work is an exploration of that understanding. Through sculpture, painting, and apparel (in collaboration with Kauai Boys), I reflect on what it means to navigate a contemporary world as a contemporary Hawaiian—existing between tradition and modernity, ancestry and individuality, expectation and self-definition. Each piece is an attempt to reconcile inherited identity with lived experience, while honoring the generations that continue to guide us.
2026 - Art Show - Kaiao Space, Honolulu
“Kū‘ena‘ena”
for the “WAHI PANA” PHASE TWO SITE ACTIVATION
Kūʻenaʻena is a series of images that reveal the truth and brilliance of who we are, despite ongoing efforts to dismantle and misrepresent our traditional knowledge systems, ways of being, and histories.
Papaʻenaʻena Heiau, originally situated directly mauka of this site, is an important heiau (place of worship) for Hawaiʻi. Noted scholars believe that Kamehameha I travelled to Papaʻenaʻena after defeating Kalanikūpule and his forces in the battle of “Ka Lele a Ka ʻAnae” (The Battle of Nuʻuanu), which marked the climax of Kamehameha I’s political campaign to unite the Hawaiian Archipelago under his supreme rule. It is believed that the captured Kalanikūpule was brought to Papaʻenaʻena and offered as a sacrifice to Kūkāʻilimoku, the island-snatching god.
Similar to the pōhaku within the heiau repurposed to build the rock wall surrounding La Pietra School for Girls, many images of Kūkāʻilimoku have been appropriated in ways that do not honor the original kiʻi and its manifestations, whether woven, carved, feathered, or otherwise. Kūʻenaʻena re-establishes the connection between this akua in places it may have been found centuries ago and continues to shine as we tell and live our stories.
2025 - Installation - Kapiʻolani Park, Waikiki
THE WAIWAI COLLECTIVE SHOW
This was my first exhibition outside of the critiques and presentations I had grown accustomed to through school and work. For the show, I put together a body of work featuring imagery I had been developing for Kinolau, a brand I collaborate with to design clothing. It was an opportunity to take these designs beyond their original context and present them as a collection of artwork, allowing me to explore the imagery in a different setting.
2024 - Art Show - WAIWAI Collective, Moʻiliʻili
