Lehuauakea
Lehuauakea is a Native Hawaiian (Kanaka ʻŌiwi) interdisciplinary artist and barkcloth-maker who works with ancestral organic materials in contemporary ways to highlight narratives of Indigenous environmental stewardship, an evolving Kanaka ʻŌiwi identity, and the teachings held in cultural mythologies and cosmologies. Since 2018, Lehuauakea has apprenticed under well-known barkcloth maker Wesley Sen. The artist is currently based between Santa Fe (NM) and Pāpaʻikou (HI).
Starting Out
In Spring 2025, Lehuauakea received the Emerging Native Arts Grant to support a solo exhibition in New York City, featuring large-scale kapa (Hawaiian barkcloth) textiles and wearable installations. Their practice revitalizes the endangered art of kapa-making while expanding it through embroidery, natural pigments, and contemporary installation.
“By incorporating mixed-media and storytelling into kapa, I hope to sustain the practice in ways that resonate with younger generations and extend its relevance beyond Hawaiʻi.”
In the Studio
Between Santa Fe and Pāpaʻikou, Lehuauakea spent the months after the grant in the studio, building new barkcloth works toward their New York presentation. The process begins long before any pattern is applied: bark from the wauke, or paper mulberry, is gathered, soaked, and beaten into cloth, then dyed with natural pigments and finished with hand-embroidery and printed designs.
That spring, the work drew national attention. Hyperallergic profiled Lehuauakea on April 13, 2025, and Colossal featured their reimagining of kapa on April 22 as one of the few kapa practitioners under 30 working in the form today.
Alongside the studio work, Lehuauakea sat down with Diné weaver DY Begay for a series of conversations about material, lineage, and carrying textile traditions forward.
Conversations with DY Begay
KILIWEHI at Sundaram Tagore
The Walker Youngbird Foundation presented KILIWEHI, a three-day solo presentation by Lehuauakea, on view July 16–18, 2026 at Sundaram Tagore in New York. Kiliwehi, a Hawaiian term meaning to reverberate or rumble, brought together contemporary barkcloth paintings rooted in the traditions of Hawaiian kapa, honoring ancestral knowledge while expanding its possibilities through contemporary practice.
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