Lehuauakea

Lehuauakea is a Native Hawaiian (Kanaka ʻŌiwi) interdisciplinary artist and barkcloth-maker who works with ancestral organic materials in contemporary ways to highlight narratives of Indigenous environmental stewardship, an evolving Kanaka ʻŌiwi identity, and the teachings held in cultural mythologies and cosmologies. By building a personal relationship with traditional techniques and materiality, Lehuauakea breathes new life into pattern symbolism used for generations and preserves cultural memory rooted in place-based practices. Grounded by ancestral modality while advancing the medium to unconventional, innovative, and tactile forms, including hand-stitched mixed-media textiles, large-scale installation, and paintings on kapa, Lehuauakea builds on these cultural knowledge systems, ensuring the perpetuation of these modes of Indigenous storytelling.

Since 2018, Lehuauakea has apprenticed under well-known barkcloth maker Wesley Sen, who trained in barkcloth-making alongside practitioners including Puanani Van Dorpe, Beatrice Krauss, Malia Solomon, Carla Freitas, Dennis Kanaʻe, and Mary Pritchard.

Their work has been shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally, and is held in many prominent collections around the globe, including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Portland Art Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Forge Project, and Museum of International Folk Art, amongst others. The artist is currently based between Santa Fe (NM) and Pāpaʻikou (HI) after earning their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting with a minor in Art + Ecology at Pacific Northwest College of Art.