amber khan | humuhumumukukuapuaa & mom + fish | 41" x 47" | acrylic on canvas
 
The exhibition presents artists who explore themes of place, belonging, and hybrid experiences of identity. The works wryly examine under-recognized details of Hawaii ephemera, calling to mind how objects anchor us in a sense of home. They parse identities that are often mixed, with relationships to places that traverse local, indigenous, hapa, and foreign. What is a “local” artist and who can make “local” work? These artists challenge that narrow concept and propose a synthesis of multiple influences where excitement is found in the remix, rather than in a single isolated identity.  
Small details function like a secret key - family photographs or clutter at an auntie’s house - that unlock a type of nostalgia. There is an ode to Asian immigrant resourcefulness and a reverence paid to everyday objects that would otherwise be overlooked. They push back at the fetishized display of our tropical surroundings while elevating common scenes to a kind of magic. These artists ask the question that many in the diaspora hold dear: whether one’s relationship to home is fixed or mutable, real or imagined.
 
Amber Khan is a mixed media artist from Honolulu, Hawaii. Her research and practice explore philosophies around forms of life and living, spatiotemporal identities, nonlinear realities, cultural production, and the natural world. Khan considers herself, primarily a sculptor with a mixed-media approach. She utilizes paper mâché, wood, joint-compound, fiber, paint, and natural objects as an exploration of visual mutations of the natural world that serve as information couriers.
 
Khan’s childhood growing up in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi as a member of the non-indigenous population and outside of the conventional American experience has disoriented her sense of belonging and place. As the child of an American mother and immigrant Pakistani father, she feels perpetually an outsider in the place she is most familiar with. The paradoxical position places her work in an environment of active realization within reality. Khan is interested in our hybrid experience of identity, of how we belong to place and to each other in a multitude of ways; and how each of us develops our own perspective by synthesizing a myriad influences. Khan sees the natural world as one influence all of us share—a connecting point for our individual and collective histories.
 
Khan received her BA in Journalism from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii, and her MFA in Sculpture from London Metropolitan University in London, England. Khan’s work has been featured in both regional and international exhibitions including Iceland’s Fresh Winds International Art Biennale, the Cyprus College of Art in Paphos, Cyprus, London, England, and Honolulu, Hawaii. Khan lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.