LEHUAUAKEA
Lehuauakea (born Portland, OR, USA; 1996) is a Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist and kapa maker from Pāpaʻikou, Hawaiʻi. With a particular focus on the labor-intensive making of kapa (bark cloth), ʻohe kāpala (carved bamboo printing tools), and the use of natural pigments, Lehua is able to breathe new life into patterns and traditions practiced for generations.
Through these traditional Native Hawaiian craft practices, their work addresses themes of environmental relations, Indigenous cultural resilience, and contemporary Kanaka Maoli identity. Lehuauakea has spent the last several years learning from well-known barkcloth maker Wesley Sen of Moanalua, Hawaiʻi, who trained in Pacific barkcloth-making with Pua Van Dorpe, Beatrice Krauss, Malia Solomon, Carla Freitas, and Dennis Kanaʻe of Hawaiʻi, and Mary Pritchard of Sāmoa. Using ancestral materials and portraying intergenerational mythologies, Lehuauakea aims to build on this tradition and ultimately share it with the next generation to ensure that this mode of Indigenous storytelling is carried well into the future.
Lehuauakea’s work has been shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally, and is held in many prominent collections around the globe, including 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 the New Mexico and Pāpaʻikou after earning their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting with a minor in Art + Ecology at Pacific Northwest College of Art.