KILIWEHI

Opening with a foreword by Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, PhD (Native Hawaiian), this publication dives into Lehuauakea's practice, personal background, and the process of creating the body of barkcloth works for KILIWEHI. Further expanded upon in an essay by Poorman Cocker (Kiowa and Tongan) and a transcribed conversation between the artist and Jaime Herrell (Cherokee), it offers readers a rich and insightful look into Lehuauakea's ethos, cultural materials, and conceptual grounding. KILIWEHI was published on the occasion of the opening of the first artist's solo exhibition in New York of the same name at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, July 2026.

Lehuauakea (b. 1996, Portland, OR) is a Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist perpetuating the traditional practice of barkcloth-making in contemporary, unconventional, and experimental forms. Combining hand-painted and stitched adornments, natural fibers, and remnant materials, Lehuauakea creates mixed-media textile works that examine Indigenous intersectional identity, land stewardship, and cosmological teachings. Raised on their ancestral homelands in Pāpaʻikou, Hawaiʻi, Lehuauakea is now based between Hawaiʻi and Santa Fe, NM.

Softcover, 84pp.

Lehuauakea Fernandez