Shangri La, a Center for Cultures & Ideas and Museum of Islamic Art has announced its latest cohort of six Kanaka Maoli artists who will participate in Wehiwehi, its artist residency program, this month. The artist residency program is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation’s Technologies and Performing Arts initiative.
For Kealoha Ferreira, a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino and Chinese dancer living in the diaspora, it is a chance to take her work back home to Oʻahu.
Ferreira grew up in Nuʻuanu. Now, she is a dancer and educator who teaches Yorchhā, a transnational feminist contemporary dance method that combines classical Indian dance form Odissi, along with Vinyasa Yoga and the martial art form Chhau. In 2024, she was named a McKnight Dancer Fellow, a prestigious honor for Minnesota choreographers and dancers, that comes with a $25,000 award that “can help an artist set aside periods of time for study, reflection, experimentation and exploration,” according to the fellowship’s website. Ferreira is also the artistic associate of Ananya Dance Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio (Poetry/Music) is another one of the Wehiwehi artist residency program participants and is an associate professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a three-time national poetry champion. Her work has been the subject of award-winning film and VR documentary projects that have premiered at Sundance and SXSW. (Lyz Soto) 
Kalia Vandever (Music) is a Grammy Award-winning trombonist and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. A Juilliard graduate and 2022 Next Jazz Legacy awardee, Vandever is on faculty at the New England Conservatory and has released critically acclaimed recordings including, "Another View." (Lesley Mok) 
Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu (Dance/Movement Art) is a māhū/bakla dancer, choreographer, multi-media artist and community organizer based on Oʻahu, whose practice centers ʻāina-based storytelling, Indigenous queer community building and land protection. (Be Ho Castle) 
Sean-Joseph Takeo Kahāokalani Choo (Theater) is a Honolulu-based playwright, performer, director and composer and Lead Steward of Kamamo House. His plays have been developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference and Kumu Kahua Theatre, among other institutions. (Judy Nguyen) 
Nāwāhineokalaʻi Lanzilotti (Music) is a kanaka ʻōiwi multidisciplinary artist, sound practitioner and educator from lower Mānoa, Oʻahu. In 2023 she founded Pulse Oceania, an initiative advancing Pacific sovereignty through Indigenous creative exchange. (Nawahine Lanzilotti)
Participants of the Wehiwehi artist residency program will participate in showcases at Bishop Museum on Friday, June 19, and Shangri La on Saturday, June 27. Details.
“This residency is a really special opportunity, both to connect with Kanaka Maoli artists and to sharpen and cultivate our artistic sensibilities,” Ferreira said. “But for me and other folks who maybe find themselves in diaspora, it’s an opportunity to really share who we are now — and who we are becoming — with the places that raised us and that we still are connected to. We don't always have the opportunity to show up in those ways.”
Ferreira is not able to participate in the showcase at Shangri La but she is looking forward to the one at the Bishop Museum. The mana of the design and artifacts there is “just so palpable,” she said.
“Who you're with that’s beyond human, and also who you're with that's beyond the present moment, right?” she said. “Because it's things from the past, but also these things from ʻthe past’ are still steering our imagination, still steering our future, and offering us so much inspiration with their continued existence.”
The residency runs from June 17 to June 27 and will take place at Shangri La, a former home of Doris Duke, which has iconic ocean views in Kāhala. The group has already met once via Zoom and will soon be meeting in person.
“I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to connect with this amazing group of artists who are diverse in discipline and also really rooted and really grounded in a sense of identity and purpose,” she said. “There's a lot of alignment in that sense of desire to perpetuate love and life and culture, but there's also a lot of difference and diversity in how we do that and the esthetics that we utilize.”
Ferreira is looking forward to seeing what the cohort creates together.
“Whenever there's a group of really amazing people who intentionally gather in the room to make work together, there's unexpected kinds of inspiration that always lands,” she said. “So, I'm also really looking forward to the things that happen that cannot be planned — and are unknown in this moment — but that you know is going to happen because kūpuna and ancestors and inspiration love a group of mischievous artistic people.”
Here is how to attend the showcases:
Wehiwehi Artist Showcase at Bishop Museum
Friday, June 19
5 to 8 p.m.
Hawaiian Hall, Bishop Museum
Admission is free and includes food and beverages.
Details.
Wehiwehi Residency Performance at Shangri La
Saturday, June 27
5 to 8 p.m.
Tickets are $50 and includes food and beverages.
Details.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
