Kūkulu: Behold the Pillars of Mauna Kea
Public Opening: May 3- September 28, 2025
The Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM) brings Kūkulu: Behold the Pillars of Mauna Kea
to Long Beach, California. This 21st installation beholds traditional arts, film, photos and music from the movement to protect the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea. Its enduring messages will be woven into the many stories from many islands, cared for at PIEAM.
Kūkulu is a project of the Mauna Kea Education and Awareness, whose purpose is to educate
and raise the awareness of communities on the spiritual, historical, cultural, and environmental significance of Mauna Kea. It highlights the decades-long resistance to the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope project, which drew global attention in 2019 as Mauna Kea Kia'i (protectors) maintained a six-month blockade of the access road leading to the project and 38 Kūpuna (elders) were arrested. This exhibit at PIEAM also shares how indigenous people of Turtle Island stand together to protect all sacred places.
"WE ARE MAUNA KEA" Weshoyot Alvitre, pen, ink, and digital coloring 2019
Guest Co-Curator, Pua Case.
Protocols
Kahaili is a Pillar of Kūkulu. Story shared by Kumu Pua Case.
Kumu Pua Case and artist Lucy Montelongo in offering to the waters.
The exhibit is generously supported in part by the Mauna Kea Education and Awareness and The Constellations Culture Change Fund & Initiative, Center for Cultural Power.
Art 25: Art in the 25th Century presents
Kinship: Translations of Place-Based Memory
Private Opening: February 22, 2025
Public Opening: February 23, 2025- Ongoing
An iteration of Art 25: Art in the 25th Century, a dynamic collective comprised of artists Lisa Jarrett (Portland, OR), Lehua M. Taitano (Santa Rosa, CA), and Jocelyn Kapumealani Ng (Honolulu, HI). It is the culmination of years (and ancestral lifetimes) of shared curiosity, vision, and an outright insistence to see their culture thrive within contemporary art. Art 25 investigates how Indigenous and Black art lives in the 21st century and collaborates with contemporary artists worldwide who envision how it will flourish in the 25th century and beyond. In forming a future archive, the collective interrogates historical access, curation, collection, consumption, and preservation of Indigenous and Black art and culture.
As a continued kinship and commitment to the people of Turtle Island, works of art by Weshoyot Alvitre, Tongva descendant will be in ceremony...
Art 25 has been featured in exhibitions by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Orí Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley, and forthcoming projects with Delisted and Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FESTPAC).
Photo by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada
Art 25 Poetry Performance
Kinship: Translations of Place-based Memory is made possible in part through Southern California Pacific Islander Community Response Team (SoCal PICRT) and the Center for Cultural Power, Constellations Folk Arts and Cultural Stewardship Grant, in partnership with the California Arts Council.