Born and raised in Hawai‘i, Melissa Chimera is a conservationist of Filipino and Lebanese ancestry whose work consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. She studied natural resources management at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and has worked in Pacific Island land stewardship and environmental education since 1996.
Her solo exhibitions or curatorial projects include Endless Archipelago (2025, First Hawaiian Center), Remittance (2022, Above the Equator Gallery), Migrant (2019, Honolulu Museum of Art) and The Far Shore: Navigating Homelands (2018, Arab American National Museum). Other projects include Inheritance, Land and Spirit for the Sharjah Biennial 9, United Arab Emirates and the University of Hawai‘i podcast Land & People which investigates Pacific Islanders’ stewardship and relationship with land.
Chimera has been published in anthologies and exhibited throughout the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, where her work has been reviewed by the Washington Post and Hyperallergic. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award, finalist for the Duke University Lange-Taylor Prize. In 2022, she was Anchorage Museum’s artist-in-residence and University of Toledo’s Mikhail Endowment grantee for her work concerning immigrant narratives. Her work resides in the collections of the Arab American National Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Hawai‘i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts. Chimera keeps a studio on Hawai‘i Island where she lives with her son and husband.