Kea Kahoilua-Clebsch

Kea is a Native Hawaiian visual artist from the Island of Hawaiʻi ,currently based in the Bay Area. Her art practice is grounded in a love for her ancestors and ʻohana, who she gets to honor and know more deeply through her work. Through painting, Kea activates family and historical archives to bring her ancestors and the practices that sustained them into space and vibrant color. Her work reflects a personal reclamation of her mo’okūʻauhau (genealogical story) in a settler-colonial context, where knowing and reciting ones genealogy often requires re-learning — calling out, listening, diving and digging. Painting has enabled this process, allowing an intimate engagement with her own genealogy. As she gathers stories from her grandmother, spends time in the guava fields her grandpa once tended to, paints the hands of her great-grandma she never knew, she reclaims her right to remember while creating space for her familyʻs moʻolelo in historical and visual canons. 

Kea is receiving a B.A. in Art Practice from Stanford University and was previously a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts.