Series
The mixed media sculpture includes the locations of my family members traversing from the Philippines and Lebanon to America as told through the public archive of place names from ship manifests, census records, etc. stitched at the bottom.

ENDLESS ARCHIPELAGO

Here, Melissa Chimera portrays two male ancestors combined as a single figure. An image of the artist’s grandfather, Teodulo, is layered with an image of Chimera’s great-grandfather, Segundo. Words and dates were scanned from the ship manifest documenting Teodulo’s arrival in Hawai‘i and Segundo’s date of death, and then applied to the painting’s surface. Both Teodulo and Segundo lived their years in Hawai‘i on sugar plantations, from their arrival to Honolulu until their passing in the plantation camps. Additional text pertaining to the artist’s patrilineage is derived from a 1926 labor report produced by the HSPA (Hawaii Sugar Plantation Association) and drafted by a US military colonel who deemed the “laborer is worthy of his hire.” The government issued report surveyed the status of Filipina/o migrants working on Hawai‘i sugar plantations to determine their capacity to be “worthy of their hire” and to advertise plantation work as a desirable quality of life. Teodulo’s fingerprint taken from his labor card— before he lost his finger connecting two sugar train cars—marks the composition. Indicative of a hard plantation life, Chimera’s family history also points to the enmeshed relationship of labor needs tied to a sugar economy, and the militarized governance during Hawai‘i’s U.S. Territorial years (1898-1959).

MIGRANT

In New Country, the artist overlays the word “native” along with other text as printed on her ancestor’s passport and a carefully rendered fig, coupled with pictures of a female child dressed as a girl in a family picture, and passing as a boy in a government photo to ensure safe passage entering a foreign country. Starvation plagued the Mount Lebanon region during World War I, and the young women pictured here survived on wild figs after becoming separated from her family, traveling between Syria and Lebanon, and eventually migrating to the U.S. via Ellis Island.

THE FAR SHORE

The work references Hawaii’s last operating sugar mill on the island of Maui which closed in 2016, ending more than one hundred years of sugar cultivation on the island. The work explores the living and non-living catalysts of change in the Hawaiian Islands--in this case, the sugar industry. The network of sugar mills across Maui transformed tens of thousands of acres thereby replacing native ecosystems and the resident endemic plants and animals dependent upon these natural areas.

AGENTS OF CHANGE

The work is inspired by the first two lines of Robert Power’s 2014 Pulitzer fictional novel about the evolutionary wonder of trees called THE OVERSTORY. They read: “First, there was nothing. Then there was everything.” This refers to the primordial universe, followed by the evolutionary miracle that is life on earth. The work plays with scale, depicting simultaneously the macro and microbiotic worlds, rare marine creatures as well as Hawaiian birds, flowers and snails. “Stay” references the anthropocene epoch by way of our technologies which have harnessed food, water, and energy but which have also left us terribly brittle, diminis­­hing the diversity that sustains us.

DELISSEA

Installations
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.

Chain Migration

January 1, 2024
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.

Chain Migration

January 1, 2024
The mixed media sculpture includes the locations of my family members traversing from the Philippines and Lebanon to America as told through the public archive of place names from ship manifests, census records, etc. stitched at the bottom.

Chain Migration (detail)

January 1, 2024
As the artist conducted genealogical research, she frequently relied on photographs to connect stories across borders and time. Wedding photographs of her ancestors, captured as bride and groom, became a key source of information for Chimera. Wedding photographs and the few family pictures she could find contained names and dates inscribed on the photo cards, which helped the artist identify deceased family members. For that reason, Chimera used her own wedding gown and veil, and took up the trade of her Lebanese predecessors to hand-work bead, glass, text, and paper applications across the garments. Her great-grandfather’s signature, Eddie Ferris, scrolls across the back, and Arabic text copied from a 1900 photo caption inks the dress from top to bottom with her great-grandmother’s words and maiden name. It reads, “This is our family photo, Haneen Shibly Messrani.”

The World Is A Wedding (front view)

January 6, 2018
As the artist conducted genealogical research, she frequently relied on photographs to connect stories across borders and time. Wedding photographs of her ancestors, captured as bride and groom, became a key source of information for Chimera. Wedding photographs and the few family pictures she could find contained names and dates inscribed on the photo cards, which helped the artist identify deceased family members. For that reason, Chimera used her own wedding gown and veil, and took up the trade of her Lebanese predecessors to hand-work bead, glass, text, and paper applications across the garments. Her great-grandfather’s signature, Eddie Ferris, scrolls across the back, and Arabic text copied from a 1900 photo caption inks the dress from top to bottom with her great-grandmother’s words and maiden name. It reads, “This is our family photo, Haneen Shibly Messrani.”

The World Is A Wedding

January 5, 2018
As the artist conducted genealogical research, she frequently relied on photographs to connect stories across borders and time. Wedding photographs of her ancestors, captured as bride and groom, became a key source of information for Chimera. Wedding photographs and the few family pictures she could find contained names and dates inscribed on the photo cards, which helped the artist identify deceased family members. For that reason, Chimera used her own wedding gown and veil, and took up the trade of her Lebanese predecessors to hand-work bead, glass, text, and paper applications across the garments. Her great-grandfather’s signature, Eddie Ferris, scrolls across the back, and Arabic text copied from a 1900 photo caption inks the dress from top to bottom with her great-grandmother’s words and maiden name. It reads, “This is our family photo, Haneen Shibly Messrani.”

The World Is A Wedding (detail, front)

January 3, 2018
As the artist conducted genealogical research, she frequently relied on photographs to connect stories across borders and time. Wedding photographs of her ancestors, captured as bride and groom, became a key source of information for Chimera. Wedding photographs and the few family pictures she could find contained names and dates inscribed on the photo cards, which helped the artist identify deceased family members. For that reason, Chimera used her own wedding gown and veil, and took up the trade of her Lebanese predecessors to hand-work bead, glass, text, and paper applications across the garments. Her great-grandfather’s signature, Eddie Ferris, scrolls across the back, and Arabic text copied from a 1900 photo caption inks the dress from top to bottom with her great-grandmother’s words and maiden name. It reads, “This is our family photo, Haneen Shibly Messrani.”

The World Is A Wedding (detail, back)

January 2, 2018
During the early 20th century, intricate wedding garments, such as this veil, were treasured heirlooms owned by wealthy brides. Yet these delicately handmade works were created by recent immigrants filling low-wage textile industry jobs left vacant by American citizens. Chimera’s Lebanese grandparents arrived to the United States separately through Ellis Island, married in 1908 and then moved to Massachusetts to eventually settle in New Jersey as garment tailors. The botanical references in this piece are many, but the most prominent ones are the large blue pa‘ūohi‘iaka flower at the bottom, pua kala and hāhā at the top. The koa‘e‘kea bird appliqued onto the fabric is indigenous to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. Rooted to a region, yet in flight, they resonate with the artist’s experience as a member of the Filipina and Lebanese diaspora who simultaneously feels connected to Hawai‘i, her birthplace, and yet remains tied to very different parts of the world.

The World Is A Wedding (Veil)

January 1, 2018
Deer, goats, and sheep which were brought to the Hawaiian archipelago by European sailing ships have transformed Hawaiian island ecosystems. In the absence of natural predators, these feral animals have displaced and endangered Hawaiian native plants and animals, and now threaten farmers, communities and their livelihoods. The installation is a contemplation on the effects of these animals--especially deer on Maui--and their collision with the land's ability to support ever expanding wild herds.

Untitled (installation)

January 1, 2016
(Left) Deer, goats, and sheep which were brought to the Hawaiian archipelago by European sailing ships have transformed Hawaiian island ecosystems. In the absence of natural predators, these feral animals have displaced and endangered Hawaiian native plants and animals, and now threaten farmers, communities and their livelihoods. The installation is a contemplation on the effects of these animals--especially deer on Maui--and their collision with the land's ability to support ever expanding wild herds. (Center) The mixed media painting "Miconia and Deer" features two prominent invasive species--one plant, and one animal--which have transformed the island of Maui. Each was introduced in the 20th century and is the focus of removal and/or containment by conservationists in sensitive ecological zones.

Untitled (installation) and Miconia & Deer

January 1, 2016
"Agents of Change" is a series of mixed media and oil paintings on linen. The work prompts questions about Hawaiian species extinction, globalization and our human role in these processes. Living and non-living catalysts— earth movers and harvesters, fishing nets, invasive species, jet planes and the Kahului airport—are the subjects of cause and effect. The works raise questions about extinction, globalization and our role as humans in these processes.

Agents of Change

January 1, 2016
Paintings
The species of Hawaiian crow, called the `alalā was once on the verge of extinction and has been the subject of intensive captive breeding programs to boost their numbers to over 125 in captivity. Revered in Hawaiian culture and the last of its kind, two birds Mana`olana and Manaiakalani were observed in May of 2019 tending to a next and eggs, a first ever in the wild. The work references the food `alalā is dependent upon (fruits of `ie`ie, lama, hau kuahiwi of Hualalai, its last known wild residence) as well as the hands responsible for the species continued survival. Although their nest in the wild did not produce young, hope remains for the `alalā release on Maui.

The Pair, ‘Alalā

January 2, 2024
The work depicts rare species of Maui, Moloka`i and Lana`i Islands. (From outer to inner: the koa butterfly, Udara blackburni; the rare Haleakala fern, Athyrium haleakalae, with 300 remaining ion the wild; the haha Cyanea macrostegia of Lana`i, East and West Maui; the makou, Peucedanum sandwicense, and the extremely rare na`u, Gardenia brighamii known from only a few trees on Lana`i and West Maui) The work references our planet with little known Hawaiian species of the sea cliffs, mountain bogs and dry forests. Together they comprise the interconnected fabric of life among the Hawaiian archipelago often referred to as the world's epicenter of species extinction. Other rare plants in burned silk include Hillebrandia sandwicensis from Maui and Kaho’olawe’s Kanaloa. The fires from 2023 are referenced and near the flames on the left is the Lahainaluna motto in Hawaiian which translated reads “not even the fiercest winds of Kaua’ula can extinguish the flame.” The burned script on the printed silk flowers of the rare na’ū (gardenia on the lower right) includes a quote from James Baldwin, “If I love you I must make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

Inheritance, Maui Nui

January 2, 2024
The numbers across the canvas reference the latitudes and longitudes of all Pacific island nations pulled together collectively across the vast Pacific Ocean, called Moananuiākea, or the blue continent. The artist invites the viewer to imagine an alternate cartography that transcends political and geographic distinctions between people of the canoe in the Pacific.

Moananuiākea

January 1, 2024
The work includes my repeating image and a Hawaiian Canavalia flower stitched in silk and abstracted into a circular pattern against a backdrop of a pearl inlaid wooden saddle (from the southern Philippines in the Honolulu Museum of Art collection) in silhouette which likewise spirals. The Pacific Island latitudes and longitudes are printed backwards, forwards and vertically.

Endless Archipelago, Filipina

January 1, 2024
Endless Blue, Mauna Kahalawai

Endless Blue

January 1, 2024
This work is a reflection on the artist's complicated lineage as the descendant of Filipino and Lebanese immigrants in Hawai‘i. The painting features Chimera on her wedding day among immigrant field laborers brought for commercial interests by foreign entities. Filipino field workers were among many immigrant groups who not only gained economically for themselves and their descendants, but also aided in the transformation of Hawai‘i from a subsistence-based sovereign nation into a cash-crop economy. The layered imagery and patterning examine the social, economic and environmental consequences of the privatization of land and wealth, the building of empires and the troubled land-use legacy we are faced with here in Hawai‘i.

Inheritance, Hawaiian Islands

January 1, 2023
A subspecies of the White-tailed Tropicbird, koa‘e kea is indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands with about 1,800 breeding pairs. The seabird rapidly beats its wings and glides effortlessly, mostly foraging alone and often far from land. Koa‘e kea plunge dive from fifty to sixty five feet above the water to capture prey. They often will follow ships. Koa‘e kea remain paired together for years in breeding colonies, performing aerial ballets at the start of the breeding season. Nests are in hard-to-reach cliffs, caves and tree hollows. In Hawai‘i, females lay only a single egg between March and October. Both parents incubate the egg, brood and feed the chick all of whom are susceptible to being eaten by rats, cats and mongoose.

Na Koaekea

January 1, 2023
For this portrait, the artist draws from her interviews of an undocumented Filipina who left nursing school in the Philippines to care for her mother undergoing treatment for an illness in the U.S. Although her mother legally resided in the U.S., no legal path to employment or residence was available to her daughter. As her mother’s sole medical caregiver, the caregiver made the fateful choice to overstay her visa, thereby jeopardizing her own safety and security under threat of deportation. After her mother’s recovery and her eventual return to the Philippines, she was banned from re-entry to the U.S. for ten years. She now holds a green card, having returned to America with her young son legally at great cost financially and personally (her son’s father remains in the Philippines). Now in her forties, she must start over once again, endeavoring to chase the “American Dream” as so many immigrants do.

The Caregiver

January 1, 2021
The series is a reflection on the mass migrations and separations which prompt so many to leave their homes to undertake harrowing journeys. The artist draws upon her familial connection with the Levant during the Great War. Each family member perished one by one from starvation and the Spanish flu one hundred years ago with the exception of her grandfather’s brother and sister (middle panel). The work references her family’s departure from Mt. Lebanon for Damascus as well as those fortunate enough to be on the other side of the gauntlet either by birth or fortitude, including the artist and her son. The series is peopled with today's Syrian and South American refugees, many of whom walk similar, fraught paths entangled with Ottoman soldiers of the past and today’s U.S. Border patrol. Although a century apart, history repeats itself with those moving between war, borders and pandemics. The artist paints from the point of view of civilians, particularly women and children who suffer the most by nations drawing, demarcating and enforcing boundaries.

Borderlands

December 1, 2020
The work is inspired by the first two lines of Robert Power’s 2014 Pulitzer fictional novel about the evolutionary wonder of trees called THE OVERSTORY. They read: “First, there was nothing. Then there was everything.” This refers to the primordial universe, followed by the evolutionary miracle that is life on earth. The work plays with scale, depicting simultaneously the macro and microbiotic worlds, rare marine creatures as well as Hawaiian birds, flowers and snails. “Stay” references the anthropocene epoch by way of our technologies which have harnessed food, water, and energy but which have also left us terribly brittle, diminis­­hing the diversity that sustains us.

Stay

January 1, 2020
Influenced by her background in nature conservation, much of Melissa Chimera's artwork investigates species extinction, globalization and human migration. In this work, she juxtaposes the lush, layered and painted surfaces, reminiscent of decorative textile patterns with the images of endemic Hawaiian honeycreepers, `I`iwi and Palila. In addition to these birds are images of her ghost-like figure as a child transferred onto silk and stitched onto the canvas, as well as the chimera monster with a branch in its mouth. The viewer is left with the delight of visual pleasure contrasted with a sense of uncertainty and trepidation. Chimera states, "This series is a call out to us, to humanity and to our birds--to stay with us a bit longer."

Noho ‘I‘iwi, Palila

January 1, 2020
Here, Melissa Chimera portrays two male ancestors combined as a single figure. An image of the artist’s grandfather, Teodulo, is layered with an image of Chimera’s great-grandfather, Segundo. Words and dates were scanned from the ship manifest documenting Teodulo’s arrival in Hawai‘i and Segundo’s date of death, and then applied to the painting’s surface. Both Teodulo and Segundo lived their years in Hawai‘i on sugar plantations, from their arrival to Honolulu until their passing in the plantation camps. Additional text pertaining to the artist’s patrilineage is derived from a 1926 labor report produced by the HSPA (Hawaii Sugar Plantation Association) and drafted by a US military colonel who deemed the “laborer is worthy of his hire.” The government issued report surveyed the status of Filipina/o migrants working on Hawai‘i sugar plantations to determine their capacity to be “worthy of their hire” and to advertise plantation work as a desirable quality of life. Teodulo’s fingerprint taken from his labor card— before he lost his finger connecting two sugar train cars—marks the composition. Indicative of a hard plantation life, Chimera’s family history also points to the enmeshed relationship of labor needs tied to a sugar economy, and the militarized governance during Hawai‘i’s U.S. Territorial years (1898-1959).

Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo

January 1, 2018
This portrait of Chimera’s grandmother, Andrea Cubero, combines an oil painting overlaid with an image on silk reproduced from Andrea’s citizenship document when she became a naturalized citizen of Hawai‘i —then an American Territory—after relocating from the Philippines. Andrea, her brother, and her mother united with her father on Maui in 1932. The “Race or Color” text running alongside the figure is derived from a 1940 census document produced by the Department of Commerce Bureau of the United States for Spreckelsville, Maui, where Andrea self-identified as Filipino in the Race or Color field, and under citizenship status, was described as “alien.” She would not receive citizenship until 1949, seventeen years after her arrival. The Philippines were U.S. allies during World War II, making immigrants from the Philippines eligible for American citizenship in the years following the 1946 passage of the Luce-Celler bill granting naturalization access to thousands of Filipina/o migrants. The leafy greens of a moringa tree, better known in Hawai‘i as kalamungay, are often used in Philippine cuisine and were a common ingredient in the specialty dishes Andrea prepared for Chimera during the artist’s childhood. In this portrait, a kalamungay leaf pattern creates a backdrop for the sole figure and personalizes the context of an individual who is otherwise recalled through government records.

Andrea Under the Moringa Tree

January 1, 2018
This large-scale diptych repeats text found on various family documents whose naturalization papers include their signatures and the line “so help me God,” paired with images of activists, immigrant healthcare workers, children in Filipina attire at Maui festivals, children in refugee camps, families moving in migrant caravans, and military scenes derived from border disputes around the world. A portal in the form of a doorway offers passage into a different world, with plants endemic to Hawai‘i rendered as an armature for the painted figures. The title of the painting refers to Hawai‘i —a distant shore for waves of immigrants over the past two centuries.

The Farthest Shore

January 1, 2018
Melissa Chimera traces her Lebanese ancestry in this family tree where a postcard written from her grandfather, Nash Ne Jame, to his only surviving brother after World War I, uses the term “old country.” WWI claimed five out of eight immediate family members, and while significantly traumatic to Ne Jame’s youth, his pre-American life was a subject he never discussed, leaving the artist to piece together a family history through documents and photographs.

Old Country

January 1, 2018
In New Country, the artist overlays the word “native” along with other text as printed on her ancestor’s passport and a carefully rendered fig, coupled with pictures of a female child dressed as a girl in a family picture, and passing as a boy in a government photo to ensure safe passage entering a foreign country. Starvation plagued the Mount Lebanon region during World War I, and the young women pictured here survived on wild figs after becoming separated from her family, traveling between Syria and Lebanon, and eventually migrating to the U.S. via Ellis Island.

New Country

January 1, 2018
Cane Fire No 2

Cane Fire No. 2

January 1, 2018
The mechanics of globalization--the earthmovers, ships, haulers, roadways--are tremendous forces reaching remote places. The agents of change featured in these panels bring about irreversable changes not only to the most isolated archipelago in the world--the Hawaiian Islands--but also to our cities, farms and rural places alike.

Not Enough Heaven & Earth

January 1, 2016
The work references Hawaii’s last operating sugar mill on the island of Maui which closed in 2016, ending more than one hundred years of sugar cultivation on the island. The work explores the living and non-living catalysts of change in the Hawaiian Islands--in this case, the sugar industry. The network of sugar mills across Maui transformed tens of thousands of acres thereby replacing native ecosystems and the resident endemic plants and animals dependent upon these natural areas.

Cash Crop, Puunene

January 1, 2016