Community members were invited Tuesday to add their handprints to two murals being created at Kona Commons Shopping Center.
Kona Commons formed a partnership with nonprofit organization, Lydia8 and EMPRESS: All Wahine Arts Festival. The partnership helps to support Lydia8’s mission of cultivating transformative artistic and cultural opportunities for the wahine of Hawaii, to mobilize communities and create real change.
The Shopping Center will be home to two murals: one featuring Haumea, the goddess of creation, and the second featuring ‘ulu, a symbol of resilience, perseverance, and security.
“We are honored to partner with Lydia8 and EMPRESS: All- Wahine Arts Festival on these murals,” said Madison Wanner, General Manager of Kona Commons in a media release. “This collaboration helps support wahine and our local communities by building pathways to self-empowerment and innovation.”
On Tuesday, community participants were guided by artists from around the Pacific who gathered in Kona for the inaugural art festival.
“We look forward to the community’s help in creating our ‘Haumea’ mural”, says Mahea Akau, event organizer for EMPRESS: All Wahine Arts Festival. “Haumea was known to cast her net into the sky to plot things such as stars and genealogies. Participants can help by filling in the colored base layers with handprints, representing each person’s presence in an ever-expanding genealogy caught in Haumea’s net.”
The inaugural EMPRESS: All-Wahine Arts Festival will take place throughout Hawaii Island and will feature wahine Pasifika, their mele and murals; 2022 artists include Kukui Mahoney (Palani Road) and Hana Yoshihata (Kona Commons). For more information visit: IG@empress.week or email aloha@lydia8.org.
The EMPRESS: All-Wahine Arts Festival uses art as a medium to invigorate identity and preserve indigenous languages and cultures while inspiring and mentoring island keiki. Their process of research, reflection, design, community outreach, painting, and curation reconnects communities to their history, to the land that they live on, to each other, and to themselves.