HT25 Aloha Nō Artist Spotlight

Kupesi Peau Ongo – Patterning Sound Waves with Dr. Sione Faletau
Saturday, February 15, 2025
1:00 – 2:00 pm
Castle Memorial Building | Atherton Hālau

$15 Special Admission Rate, includes full gallery access. Free for Bishop Museum Members

Join us for an interactive experience with Dr. Sione Faletau exploring the connection between sound, resonance, and Pacific patterns. Dr. Faletau will welcome attendees to HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum sharing insights into his artistic practice, then guide attendees in a sound walk around the Museum grounds to record the ambient soundscape of Kaiwiʻula. The experience will culminate in the creation of new works using sound files submitted by participants.

Send your ambient sound files (MP3 or WAV) to sionefaletau.artist@gmail.com by 11:00 am on Saturday, February 15, and witness how Dr. Faletau transforms the sounds of your world into visual art.

Dr. Sione Faletau is an interdisciplinary artist of Tongan descent whose practice spans soundscape design, projection mapping, performance, video, drawing, sculpture, and installation. His work is deeply rooted in Tongan concepts such as fonua (land, people, womb) and ongo (sound, feeling), exploring cultural and environmental relationships through contemporary and traditional lenses. Faletau holds a Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts, where his research focused on Tongan masculinity from an Indigenous perspective, using the Talanoa methodology. His artistic approach often translates soundscapes into visual kupesi (patterns), manipulating audio wave spectrums into intricate designs. His work has been exhibited internationally and locally, engaging with cultural identity and environmental narratives.

HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum

Now in its fourth iteration, HT25 is the collaborative effort of dozens of artists, key venues and organizational partners engaging on the central theme of ALOHA NŌ. A resounding call to know, ALOHA NŌ is an invitation to form new understandings of love as acts of care, resistance, solidarity, and transformation. Contrary to its ubiquitous and over-commodified presence, aloha is an action that comprises a profound love and truth-telling, a practice that has been kept and cared for by the people of Hawaiʻi for generations. This practice of aloha engenders deep connectivity to the ʻāina, oceanic environment, elements, and each other. It allows us to manifest sovereignty and self-determination, and to stand in solidarity with others.

HT25 ALOHA NŌ at Bishop Museum exhibits the work of nine contemporary artists, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Nālamakūikapō Ahsing, Emily Karaka, John Pule, Kapwani Kiwanga, Salote Tawale, Sione Faletau, Stephanie Syjuco and Tiare Ribeaux. Their respective art practices have a connection to cultural material and are informed by archival collections, including the collections of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. This intergenerational grouping of artists explores their personal and cultural relationships to land and colonized territories, offering visualizations of “home/land” and interpretations of its defense.