Through strategic partnerships and collaborations with artists from an array of disciplines and backgrounds, HRC has been able to connect with audiences whose lived experiences we attempt to elevate during celebrations such as Asian American and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian Heritage Month. We partnered with interdisciplinary artist Lehuauakea as part of our AANHPI Heritage Month celebration in May.

 

Lehuauakea, a māhū Native Hawaiian artist and kapa maker, explores the relationships between culture and land, observing the significance that location plays in the beauty of heritage and history. To help us honor AANHPI Heritage Month, and to visually encapsulate the joy of celebrating diversity, Lehuauakea provided artwork that speaks to and beyond AANHPI communities. We talked to Lehuauakea about this and other aspects of their work while also discussing the importance of queer intersectionality within progressive movements like the fight for LGBTQ+ equality:

 

HRC’s collaborative partnerships with artists of various mediums intends to elevate the experience of living within the intersections of LGBTQ+ identities with other identities. How did your artistic partnership with HRC help you showcase your experiences as an artist, as a queer individual and Native Hawaiian?

 

As a māhū, which means non-binary or queer, Native Hawaiian artist, all of these identities are inseparable from each other and each plays a role to inform the work I create. Through this collaboration, I was able to elevate the voices of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, who are often overlooked within the AANHPI or API acronyms, while also paying tribute to the roles that queer individuals have held within our communities, both historically and today. In Native Hawaiian culture, māhū and queer visibility is something that has much more ground to cover, even though we have made considerable strides forward in recent years. With this work, I honor those who have come before me, my ancestors still living and those who have passed on, without whom I wouldn’t be able to create or confidently know my own identity in the ways I do now.

 

How often do elements of queer life help comprise your artistic work? As a queer artist yourself, can you describe how queer experiences are manifested in your work, either intentionally or subconsciously?

 

Within my practice, I often see my māhū and queer identity coming forth in the ways that I intentionally approach the traditions that comprise kapa-making, or bark cloth. In the past, beating kapa was typically reserved for the women in a community, while the painting of the finished cloth as well as the tool-making required for the process was completed by the men. Those who were māhū, individuals who embodied both masculine and feminine energies, were likely allowed to do all of these tasks, as they were granted the ability to move throughout spaces that were otherwise under spiritual restrictions to non-māhū. As a whole, not only am I working to revive kapa-making, a practice that was nearly lost to colonization; but I also aim to reclaim our traditional queer identities that were highly stigmatized after religious missionary contact in the early 1800s.

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