NEWS

2025

This public program extended a core throughline of the practice: oceanic space not as backdrop, but as a primary architecture of relation, movement, and obligation. Centering vā moana (relational space across the sea), the talk foregrounded Pacific epistemologies that refuse colonial perimeter-thinking and instead prioritize kinship, navigation, and responsibility as structuring principles for understanding “region.” The impact lies in how the program translates archipelagic and oceanic ways of knowing into a rigorous interpretive lens for contemporary conditions—environmental precarity, infrastructure, and political justice—while modeling how contemporary art can function as a tool for public learning and future-making across disciplinary audiences.

A/P/A at NYU presented Hawai‘i is not the United States, but it is your Future as a major exhibition and public-facing platform developed through the artist’s institutional engagement. Treating the built environment as a cultural record shaped by power, the exhibition positioned land tenure, hydrology, governance, and infrastructural vulnerability as lived spatial facts rather than abstract themes—made legible through sculpture, mapping, moving image, and site-based propositions. As a News & Impact anchor, the project demonstrates how the practice holds conceptual continuity across media while maintaining place-based specificity: Hawai‘i as a particular site, and also a global signal where unevenly distributed futures—political, environmental, and infrastructural—are already present.

NYU published an institutional preview introducing the forthcoming exhibition and its framing. As an archive item, this moment matters because it documents the work’s public positioning through university-authored language—an external articulation of stakes that strengthens credibility, discoverability, and future citation. The impact is not promotional; it is structural. Institutional previews establish a project’s public life before opening, clarifying how the work sits within broader cultural programming and how audiences are being invited to read it: not as isolated objects, but as a cohesive inquiry into land, water, architecture, and power.

A major museum editorial feature spotlighted the artist’s cartographic work, including Spheric Oceania, framing mapping as cultural infrastructure rather than neutral representation. Positioned within an international museum context, the feature amplified an argument central to the practice: oceanic knowledge systems can reorganize what the “world map” centers, how region is understood, and what responsibilities follow from relation rather than border. The impact is both reputational and interpretive—expanding audience reach beyond Hawai‘i- and architecture-specific publics while reinforcing that the practice’s cartographies are not illustrations of identity, but spatial propositions with intellectual and civic stakes.

Recognition through a major architecture and design grant program documented external validation and resourcing for research-forward work operating at the intersection of cultural practice and built-environment critique. In a News & Impact archive, this entry signals more than funding: it marks confidence in a methodology where spatial analysis, mapping, and public-facing inquiry function as cultural infrastructure. The impact is enabling and field-legible—supporting development timelines and institutional partnerships while reinforcing the artist’s position within architecture-sector discourse without separating that work from contemporary art and civic engagement.

Selection to provide landscape mapping services affirmed the applied dimension of the practice: mapping not only as representation, but as an enabling tool for land-based visioning and community-led stewardship. This commission reflects trust in a hybrid approach that is technically capable while grounded in ethics, ancestry, and accountability to place-based needs. The impact is practical and systemic—supporting better decisions about care, access, and long-term resilience by making terrain, resources, and priorities legible. It also reinforces a defining feature of the practice: artistic methods extended into real sites, where the work becomes materially and socially operative over time.

A public conversation convened cross-geographic dialogue on dispossession, diaspora, survivance, and the cultural work of insisting on land, memory, and political voice. Positioned within a university public forum, the event demonstrated how the practice operates beyond exhibition contexts—treating convening, speech, and coalition-building as part of the work’s civic and ethical infrastructure. The impact is not symbolic; it is discursive and relational. By making space for shared analysis across distinct but resonant histories, the program models how artistic practice can support clarity, responsibility, and alignment—expanding what “impact” looks like when art functions as a site of public learning and collective accountability.

An Artist-in-Residence appointment positioned the practice within a sustained institutional context, recognizing an interdisciplinary approach spanning Oceania and the Pacific with emphasis on built environments, waterways, ocean space, and civic responsibility. Aligned with A/P/A’s public programming mandate, the residency elevated the work as public scholarship—research translated into conversations, interpretive frameworks, and models for reimagining identity, community, and place-based obligation. The impact is strategic: residencies of this kind consolidate visibility into authorship, allowing the artist’s long-term inquiry to be presented as a coherent, cumulative body of work rather than a set of separate projects across media.

2024

A contribution to a major design publication placed the work within a national conversation about how “home” is constructed across the United States, U.S. territories, and Tribal Nations. In this context, the practice’s core position becomes legible to design and policy audiences: spatial systems are not neutral—they organize belonging, distribute risk, and determine which histories are rendered visible. The impact is archival and discursive. Publication consolidates the work’s alignment with critical design discourse while extending its frameworks into classrooms, institutional libraries, and professional reference networks—strengthening the artist’s standing as both a maker and a producer of concepts that travel beyond exhibitions.

Inclusion in a Smithsonian triennial positioned Hawaiʻi- and Pacific-centered spatial practice within a national platform examining home, belonging, and the systems that structure everyday life. Presented within a framework that expands “home” beyond property and dwelling, the project aligns with the artist’s emphasis on place as an interconnected familial, ecological, cultural, and political system. The impact is institutional and cultural: it broadens public understanding of architecture’s responsibilities, foregrounding stewardship and collective futures over style. It also reinforces the practice’s capacity to hold cultural specificity while operating within major museum contexts that shape broader design narratives.

Work from the Africa Pacific series was included in a curated exhibition challenging colonial geopolitical divisions and emphasizing interwoven subjectivities across Asia and the South Pacific. Participation strengthened the practice’s international positioning within decolonial and transregional dialogues—where mapping, identity, and region are treated as contested constructions rather than fixed categories. The impact is both conceptual and strategic: it situates Pacific-centered frameworks within broader “South by Southeast” orientations, expanding how audiences understand connectivity and history beyond nation-state narratives while reinforcing the practice’s long-term critique of imposed boundaries and extractive worldmaking.

Selection into an interdisciplinary futures-oriented fellowship ecosystem documented institutional investment in speculative practice grounded in real-world stakes. For a News & Impact archive, this entry functions as a research-and-creation milestone: it supports work that treats imagination as a practical tool—capable of shaping cultural, ecological, and spatial futures rather than functioning only as symbolic representation. The impact is developmental and networked: fellowships of this kind provide time, platform, and peer exchange that strengthen long-horizon inquiry, reinforcing the practice’s coherence across media and contexts while expanding the field in which the work is legible.

Participation as a presenter in a major convening focused on art, public space, and civic life documented the practice’s role as discourse-shaping, not only exhibition-based. Positioned within a program known for engaging questions of democracy, responsibility, and social practice, this entry reinforces the artist’s commitment to extending inquiry beyond the gallery and into the conditions the work addresses. The impact is public-facing clarity: convenings of this kind shape field priorities and shared vocabulary, and they situate the artist’s frameworks—land, water, infrastructure, power—within broader public debates about what culture can do in real time.

Inclusion in a museum exhibition focused on Pacific ocean health, cultural and environmental devastation, and Indigenous knowledge positioned the work within a framework where art is treated as a driver of ecological change rather than commentary alone. The impact lies in scale and relevance: the practice’s Pacific standpoint becomes a rigorous lens on planetary risk—extraction, militarization, and environmental transformation—while remaining accountable to place-based specificity. This entry strengthens the practice’s alignment with interdisciplinary contexts where art, science, and cultural knowledge converge, reinforcing the artist’s role in translating ecological and political realities into publicly legible forms.

Selection as an inaugural grantee marked a significant resourcing milestone recognizing a hybrid practice that braids artistic production with research, community engagement, and political clarity around land and water systems. In impact terms, the award is catalytic: it supports deeper development, longer research horizons, and stronger public-facing outputs. Grants of this kind do more than fund production; they validate approach—affirming that work operating across exhibition, civic initiative, and spatial analysis constitutes essential cultural infrastructure capable of holding historical complexity while advancing long-term ecological and social futures.

Selection to provide design and master planning services emphasized the practice’s ability to move between cultural work and applied spatial planning, treating planning as an ethical act rather than a detached professional service. The impact is structural: master planning shapes what becomes possible over time—access, spatial priorities, stewardship capacity, and the visibility of cultural intent in the built environment. This entry underscores a defining characteristic of the practice: artistic inquiry extended into real sites and governance conditions, where design decisions become long-duration interventions and where responsibility to land and community is built into the work’s operative logic.

2023

A peer-reviewed article advanced the scholarly dimension of the practice through research-based mapping and historical analysis of Loko Ea and American infrastructure projects since 1898. The impact is twofold: it contributes to historical knowledge production while demonstrating mapping as critical method—capable of making power legible through space, and of tracing how colonial development reshapes land and water systems over time. Publication in a respected historical journal also consolidates the practice’s standing as interdisciplinary scholarship, reinforcing that the work produces durable intellectual infrastructure alongside exhibitions and public projects.

Appointment to a statewide cultural governance body documented civic leadership extending beyond individual projects. Commissioners influence policy, resource distribution, and program direction affecting artists, institutions, and public cultural life across Hawaiʻi. The impact is structural: it situates the artist within decision-making systems that shape long-term cultural capacity. This role reinforces a key principle of the practice—art as civic responsibility—by aligning cultural work with stewardship, accountability, and institutional frameworks that outlast single exhibitions.

A major academic journal published an essay examining the 2021 installation Learning from Lēʻahi within broader debates on urbanism, empire, and Pacific histories. As a News & Impact entry, this functions as secondary scholarly validation: the work enters citation networks, curricula, and ongoing research conversations beyond the art world’s immediate cycle. The impact is archival and intellectual—demonstrating that the practice’s spatial critique is legible within rigorous interdisciplinary discourse and that its concerns (development, governance, and place) operate as contributions to how Pacific space is studied, taught, and understood.

Participation in a major museum film context extended the moving-image dimension of the practice into a platform designed for broad public reach and critical attention. Translating spatial and political inquiry into time-based form, the work operates as a delivery system for research—allowing histories of land, water, and infrastructure to circulate through narrative and image rather than remaining bound to site or object. The impact is distributional and interpretive: museum-affiliated presentation expands visibility while reinforcing that the practice’s media shifts do not signal fragmentation, but continuity—different forms advancing the same long-term inquiry into place, power, and futurity.

2022

A museum–media collaboration presented the work in a short-form video format designed for wide public circulation across contemporary art and design audiences. The impact is amplification and cross-disciplinary legibility: museum media ecosystems reach viewers who may never encounter the work through exhibitions or academic writing, while reinforcing credibility within architecture and critical design discourse. As an archive entry, this moment documents a strategic form of distribution aligned with the practice’s aims—communicating complex spatial histories through direct, affecting visual language that can travel widely without losing conceptual rigor.

An invitation to a major academic conference positioned the practice within advanced discourse on landscape, power, and future-making. The impact is intellectual and networked: convenings of this kind influence how institutions define field priorities, and they shape how emerging practitioners understand responsibility in relation to land and infrastructure. Bringing Hawaiʻi- and Pacific-centered frameworks into this setting expands what is treated as foundational knowledge, resisting continental assumptions and insisting that oceanic and archipelagic conditions are central—not peripheral—to contemporary debates on ecology and design.

Recognition through a major film-development institution affirmed the work’s capacity to translate spatial research and political inquiry into narrative and time-based media forms. The impact is strategic and infrastructural: fellowship ecosystems provide mentorship, professional networks, and development pathways that expand how—and where—the work circulates. As a News & Impact entry, this marks a shift in distribution scale without changing the practice’s core: film functions as another delivery system for research, history, and futurity, extending the practice’s public address beyond the exhibition format.

Selection for a residency centered on ecology, language, and place-based reflection supported deep research and production for a practice concerned with stewardship, cultural memory, and long-horizon thinking. The impact is developmental: residencies provide time, site, and conceptual conditions that strengthen material and methodological coherence. Positioned within an environment attentive to environmental advocacy and cultural continuity, this entry reinforces the practice’s grounding in place as living system—familial, ecological, and political—rather than as backdrop.

Shortlist recognition signaled reputational momentum for an ambitious, interdisciplinary practice operating at the intersection of art, design research, mapping, and civic engagement. The impact is catalytic: visibility through a major support organization strengthens future funding prospects and institutional partnerships while affirming that hybridity is not a liability, but a defining asset. As an archive item, it functions as external confirmation of trajectory—an indicator that the field recognizes the work’s capacity for consequential cultural contribution.

Inclusion in an internationally distributed edited volume positioned the work within global discourse on climate, habitat, and built systems. The impact is archival and pedagogical: publications circulate through institutions as teaching and reference materials, extending the work’s life beyond exhibition cycles and reinforcing the practice’s standing as both artistic and scholarly. This entry supports the practice’s central claim that form, site, and research are inseparable—environmental realities and cultural frameworks braided into methods that address how power shapes land, water, and habitation.

An invited lecture placed the practice in direct dialogue with architectural pedagogy and institutional audiences, emphasizing method: reading environments as evidence, mapping as critique, and design as responsibility. The impact is educational and generational—university lectures shape what emerging architects and artists understand as the stakes of their work. This entry also reinforces the practice’s coherence across contexts: the same inquiry moves between sculpture and mapping, exhibition and civic space, without diluting rigor.

A public talk tied to a major public-art initiative made the work’s intent and process accessible through dialogue rather than only through installation. The impact is interpretive access: conversation builds shared vocabulary for how space carries power—what gets built, remembered, funded, and protected. It also underscores the practice’s capacity to operate across civic and educational infrastructures, aligning public art distribution with public learning.

Coverage documented the formation of a grassroots platform for Hawaiʻi-based spatial discourse, programming, and advocacy. In a News & Impact archive, this is institution-building as practice: not ancillary professional activity, but a primary structure through which spatial, ecological, and political questions are enacted and sustained. The impact is infrastructural and durable—platforms outlast single exhibitions, enabling ongoing convening, collaboration, and public accountability rooted in local priorities and long-term futures.

Moving-image work entered an international institutional context engaging questions of Indigeneity, power, and institutional critique. Presented within a framework that refused conventional geopolitical boundaries, the exhibition and its public programming positioned the artist within a global cohort advancing decolonial inquiry through contemporary form. The impact is contextual and reputational: it demonstrates the practice’s ability to travel across media and geographies while remaining grounded in place-based ethics and political clarity.

Support embedded a Hawaiʻi-specific infrastructural and memorial inquiry inside an academic studio structure, enabling students to engage water systems, ecology, and contested public memory as active design problems rather than neutral urban facts. The impact is formative and multiplicative: studio contexts expand influence by generating new research, proposals, and shared language that can circulate beyond the artist’s direct authorship. This entry documents the practice functioning as a teaching tool and civic lens—aligning cultural work with pedagogical infrastructures that shape future practitioners.

A work was distributed across major U.S. cities through bus shelter infrastructure, placing sculpture-derived form into everyday civic circulation rather than museum space. The impact is scale and access: commuters and pedestrians encounter the work as part of daily life, expanding who is addressed and how public space functions as a distribution system for contemporary art. This entry also reinforces a consistent strategy in the practice—using building systems and structural language as both form and critique, where legibility in public space carries deeper historical and political charge.