Nanea Lum

Nanea Lum (b. 1991, Kahaluʻu, Oʻahu) is a Native Hawaiian artist based in Honolulu whose research-based practice interrelates kapa (Hawaiian barkcloth) making with large-scale oil painting, printmaking, drawing, and time-based media. She earned her MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2021). Her kapa is made from wauke she personally harvests, beats, and dyes with homemade charcoal, earth pigments, and plants.

Approach. Lum’s work explores the intersections of land, sky, and sea through Hawaiian concepts and stories of creation, “bridging the worlds between creation and creating.” Her use of kapa and video extends material into duration, making process and time visible within the work, and chronicling place-based collaborations between artist and ʻāina.

Selected works & exhibitions. Nuʻuanu Streaming (2023, LIFT public-art project); Eia Ke Kumu (2021); the publication Hele a Hoʻi (2023, Tropic Editions). She was a Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 artist, a 2023 NACF LIFT awardee, and was presented by Ontopo at NADA New York (2022).

Dive deeper
Hawaiʻi Contemporary profile
Instagram
Interview (The Offing)
Native Arts & Cultures Foundation