In the spring of 2022, I received my first ever acceptance to a juried call from a gallery in North Carolina. My small acrylic piece, the “‘awela”, was invited to the “Spring to Life” exhibition of 311 Gallery in Raleigh. This invitation struck something within me, and ignited a crazy idea smack in the middle of my ever-hectic last semester of law school – what if I set on a creative journey of exhibiting at least once in every state? In the middle of my Taxation II stress and an impending moot court competition, the project “Fifty + One” was born.
The “plus one,” of course, is Washington, DC, the first ever art competition that brought one of my works outside of Hawai’i. My chalk portrait of my late grandmother won the 2012 Hawai’i Congressional Art Competition, and the piece was displayed at the Capitol tunnels for a year. Three years later, I would intern at Capitol Hill and would be walking by the very tunnels my grandmother saw before I did.
After DC, my next big break happened in California where I headlined for the “arts” part of the 2017 Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival. I repainted my “Na Nai’a I” piece into a recycling bin. It was a surreal experience getting to exhibit along career and professional artists in Los Angeles, and this opportunity certainly gave me a unique perspective on how I can improve OFVON and further establish my artistic career.
It was not until after DC and California that I began searching for creative and artistic opportunities in Hawaii. It started with the “We Are Here” 2017 Pride Month Exhibition in Honolulu and most recently a showing with the Morning Brew at Kakaako in 2021, when I debuted my popular “Kontrapropriation” series.
“Kontrapropriation” was actually what led to my ‘awela piece - it was a deeper dive into the cut-out era of Matisse while still attempting to be decolonial as much as possible. The attention and positive reactions to the ‘awela piece and the other pieces in the i’a collection were overwhelming. However, it was the conversations that emanated from this piece and collection that truly inspired me and kept me motivated during this artistic journey.
And so the “Fifty + One” project was born - an artistic and creative journey of all sorts, where I slowly take over the United States one decolonial artwork at a time, exploring what it means to indigenize one’s mind and spaces while learning more about myself as an artist.