DANE NAKAMA

"At what point do our histories turn into mythology - do our ancestors become characters in stories we tell our children before they go to sleep? At what distance do our homelands become dreamlands? Does our blood begin to speak a different language? Or do our bones turn to milk?"

 

Dane Hiʻipoi Nakama (b. 1999, Honolulu, Hawai‘i) is a 3.5/5th generation Japanese-Uchinanchu ceramicist, painter, and educator from the island of Oʻahu, currently based on Tongva land. Growing up, their father—a retired Hawaiian history teacher—would tell them bedtime stories about Hawaiian akua and their family’s journey to Hawai‘i, while their grandmother shared Japanese mukashibanashi. These stories became a catalyst for the dreamy, multicultural lexicon that defines their work today. Through what Nakama describes as an “island dream journal” style of making, their art often explores themes of cultural hybridity, settler colonialism, indigeneity, and ancestral knowledge. Nakama is currently pursuing an MFA in ceramics at UCLA.