MO‘IKEHA

2014, Mixed Media on paper

Moʻikeha — Remembering the Way Home

Moʻikeha draws from the moʻolelo of Moʻikeha, the esteemed Polynesian chief and navigator whose journeys between Hawaiʻi and Kahiki speak to migration, return, and ancestral continuity. The work reflects an understanding of voyaging not only as physical movement across the ocean, but as an ongoing practice of remembering where we come from and how knowledge is carried forward through generations.

The design intention is to slow the act of looking — to encourage deeper reflection on genealogy, place, and the presence of ancestral guidance in the present. Rather than illustrating a single story, the work invites viewers to consider how voyaging knowledge continues to shape orientation, decision-making, and responsibility over time.

The piece was created during an Indigenous artist residency at the Longhouse at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington — a culturally resonant space that supports Indigenous presence, exchange, and reflection. Developed through a layered process of relief printing, gestural drawing, and mixed media, the work builds gradually, allowing forms and symbols to emerge through repetition and adjustment.

Recurring motifs, drawn from my ongoing vocabulary of Indigenous abstraction, suggest navigational maps, celestial alignments, and ancestral structures. At the center of the composition, a sail-like form anchors the work, referencing both the physical act of voyaging and the directional knowledge passed down through generations. The sail becomes a point of orientation — a reminder that movement is guided not by force, but by attentiveness and inherited wisdom.

Moʻikeha functions as both a visual meditation and a cultural offering. It asks viewers to reflect on how ancestral stories remain active — not as distant history, but as living guides that continue to inform how we move, return, and find our way forward.