Wayne Kaumualii Westlake

Wayne Kaumualii Westlake was a Hawaiian poet, a journalist, an educator, an artist, a scholar, and an activist born on Maui and raised on the island of Oahu. He earned his BA in Chinese studies at the University of Hawaiʻi. Before his tragic death, Westlake produced an innovative body of work: he translated Taoist classical literature and Japanese haiku and interwove perspectives from his Hawaiian heritage into his writing and art. The only collection of his poems available during his lifetime was a 32-page, limited edition chapbook independently published by a small press. The posthumous collection Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947–1984), edited by Mei-Li M. Siy and Richard Hamasaki (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), includes nearly 200 poems, many previously unpublished.

a handstamp of the word HULI upside down

Huli,​ 1979
Hand stamp rubber type with hanko
Courtesy of Mei-Li Siy and Richard Hamasaki

Curators

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick is an artist, independent curator, and community educator from Mōkapu, Kailua, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu. Currently, he serves as Director of Koa Gallery at Kapiʻolani Community College. Previously, he was a contributing member of Hawaiʻi-based collective PARADISE COVE (2015-2018), operated SPF Projects (2012-2016) an artist-run initiative dedicated to building capacity for contemporary art in Honolulu, and co-founded an annual open call thematic exhibition, CONTACT (2014-present). Recent and forthcoming projects include Transits and Returns (2019), co-developed by Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Freja Carmichael, Léuli Lunaʻi Eshrāghi, Tarah Hogue, Lana Lopesi for the Vancouver Art Gallery; Mai hoʻohuli i ka lima i luna (2020), co-curated with Kaʻili Chun and Kapulani Landgraf for the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum, and Revisiting Kealakekua Bay, Reworking the Captain Cook Monument (2021), a speculative group endeavor presenting unrealized interventionist proposals. Drew holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York, and a BA in Biology and Studio Art from Wesleyan University, Connecticut.

Josh Tengan

Josh Tengan is a Honolulu-based contemporary art curator. He was the assistant curator of the second Honolulu Biennial 2019, To Make Wrong / Right / Now. Since 2015, he has worked with Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-based artists and cultural practitioners, through the arts non-profit Puʻuhonua Society, to deliver Hawaiʻi’s largest annual thematic contemporary art exhibition, CONTACT, which offers a critical and comprehensive survey of local contemporary visual culture. In 2019, he curated CONTACT, Acts of Faith, presented at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archive, which explored the role of religion in the colonization of Hawaiʻi through artistic interventions in the historic collections and an artist book library. He holds a Curatorial Studies M.A. with Distinction from Newcastle University (UK) and a B.A. in Fine Art from Westmont College.

Artists