Kea Kahoilua-Clebsch

Kea is a Native Hawaiian artist from the island of Hawaiʻi. Her art practice is grounded in a love for her ancestors and ʻohana, who she gets to honor and know more deeply through her work. Primarily working in oil paint, Kea's art opens portals to her history, where she momentarily lives with and learns from the kānaka who precede her. Contrasting moments of clarity and dream-like haze, Kea moves in and out of touch with her subjects until land and body are indiscernible, emphasizing the ways kānaka, our histories, and our political movements are embedded in land. Her practice aims to weave her ʻohana's stories into Hawaiʻi's colonial histories and celebrate the strength of her predecessors who each resist in their own right. 

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Kea is currently studying Art Practice at Stanford University with a minor in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She is excited to return to her community and embrace a cross pollination of her two fields.