Endless Archipelago – First Hawaiian Center, Honolulu, HI

The mixed media sculpture includes me as a child among my family members traversing from the Philippines and Lebanon to America (left panel) as told through the public archive of place names from ship manifests, census records, etc. stitched at the bottom. The right panel references today’s journeys made by contract South Asian migrant fishermen of Honolulu Harbor, health care and hospitality workers, and political asylum seekers. The work calls into question the tenuous and fraught relationship between immigrants—both legal and undocumented—and their countries of departure and arrival as they search for work, family or evade imprisonment and death.

Oil on canvas and linen, mixed media sewn onto burned silk 154” wide x 14 ft tall

Chain Migration, 2024

Chain Migration, 2024

The Pair, Alalā (2024)

The Pair, Alalā (2024)

Moananuiākea, 2024

Moananuiākea, 2024

Endless Archipelago, Filipina, 2024

Endless Archipelago, Filipina, 2024

The Land is the Beloved (left) and We Are the Sea (right), 2024

The Land is the Beloved (left) and We Are the Sea (right), 2024

Endless Blue, 2024

Endless Blue, 2024