“My favorite thing about kapa is that it is simultaneously ancestral, ancient, and contemporary,” says Lehuauakea (Kanaka Maoli), who lately obtained the Walker Youngbird Basis grant for rising Native American artists. Kapa, the Indigenous Hawaiian observe of clothmaking, makes use of the internal bark of the wauke, or paper mulberry tree, to create clothes and textiles. For Lehuauakea, the method varieties the muse of a observe rooted within the artist’s Hawaiian lineage and materials traditions.
Softening the fibers sufficient to create material requires a labor-intensive methodology of soaking items of bark. By means of an arduous strategy of beating and stretching with instruments just like the iʻe kuku, a skinny, pliable cloth emerges. “It is a very malleable material that reflects the current state of the natural environment, and the surrounding community and personal hand of the maker,” Lehuauakea tells Colossal. “It requires a level of patience and perseverance while also paying close attention to the nature of the bark and pigments you are working with.”
Kapa is derived from historic Polynesian practices—it’s known as tapa in different components of the Pacific—and Hawaiians elaborated on the customized by incorporating watermarks, pure pigments, and fermentation.
Historically, kapa possessed each sensible and religious qualities, because it was used for on a regular basis attire and bedding but additionally served as a provider of mana, or therapeutic life drive. When the U.S. controversially annexed the territory and the import of cotton amped up within the late nineteenth century, the observe all however died out.
Lehuauakea’s curiosity in kapa emerged when their household relocated to Oregon once they have been younger. Over time, the artist felt more and more disconnected from their house and sought a solution to conjure a hyperlink to their Hawaiian ancestry.
“I remembered learning about kapa as a child and how we’d use patterns to tell stories, so in my junior year of college I taught myself how to carve ʻohe kāpala, or traditional carved bamboo printing tools used for decorating finished kapa,” the artist says. Then it was onto studying the right way to make the barkcloth itself, with the assistance of artisan and mentor Wesley Sen, spurring Lehuauakea’s ardour for the medium.
Fascinated by the potential to not solely proceed a time-honored Kanaka Maoli artwork kind but additionally to experiment and push the boundaries of the fabric, Lehuauakea makes large-scale installations, hand-stitched clothes, mixed-media suspended works, and painted by hand two-dimensional compositions— “in other words, forms that you wouldn’t see in ancestral samples of pre-contact Hawaiian kapa,” they are saying. The artist continues:
As an Indigenous cultural practitioner and artist, I consider it is very important have a stable basis within the conventional data of the observe earlier than making an attempt to increase on it or experiment with extra up to date expressions of the medium as a result of I’m not singular on this work; I’m merely constructing on a convention that was handed down via many generations earlier than me, and I can solely hope that I’m able to encourage future generations to proceed it.
Lehuauakea is at the moment working towards solo exhibitions on the Middle for Up to date Artwork Santa Fe and Nunu High-quality Artwork in New York Metropolis, exploring concepts round Native Hawaiian cosmology, celestial cycles, and the connection between Native Hawaiian language and sample. Discover extra on the artist’s web site.
