NICOLE NAONE
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ʻO NICOLE ALOHALANI NAONE kēia keiki. He keiki a Alika Naone (k), ku‘u mākuakane, he hiapo a Kapiʻolani Kawaiaea (w), ku‘u makuahine. ʻO Alika he keiki a Naalohaelua Naone (k). He hiapo a Lyons Kapiioho Naone (k) a Kahiliula Auoholani (w) ma Waialua, Oʻahu. He keiki a Kawaiolaʻakane (k) a Kawahineaukai Holi (w). He keiki a Mele Papa (w) a Kamaʻiholio Keawemauhili (k). He keiki a Kahālaupiloo Keawemauhili (k) a Kanaheleaumoku (w). He keiki a Kūʻōpā (k) a Poekalani (w). He keiki a ka niaupio, Kamoaokalani (k) a Kaʻōnohialiʻi (w). He mau keiki niaupio a Kaʻailupeʻa (w) a Kekauhiwamoku (k) ma Maui . ʻO Kekauhiwamoku he keiki a Kānaeʻalae (w) ma Molokaʻi a Kekaulike Kalaninui Kuihonoikamoku
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Nicole Naone is a Kanaka Maoli, Korean cultural producer with practices spanning the film, sculpture and virtual reality realms. She is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools (Kapālama Campus) and received her BFA with an emphasis in sculpture from the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. Naoneʻs most notable cinema credits include producing short film Lahaina Noon (2014) and the multi award winning scripted feature WAIKIKI (2020). As a writer/director she has created art-house short film installations like Mauna Fuji (2014, Honolulu Biennial), Kalaoke o Mākua; (2019, Contact Exhibition), PIKO: Virtual Reality (2021, Honolulu Museum of Artʻs Hawaiʻi Now Exhibition). Most recently her piece Hawaiians, Unite - a video spot for MTV was nominated for a Webby and reached over 8 million people across all Viacom networks. Naone has contributed her mastery of visual communication to many spaces of Native Hawaiian resistance, most notably in the fight to protect Maunakea, and the repatriation of ʻiwi kupuna (Hawaiian bones) with Hui Iwi Kuamoo.
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I descend from a lineage of Kamehameha the Great’s exclusive warrior class, the same warrior class that helped transform the Hawaiian archipelago into a Hawaiian nation. It is this genealogical connection that continues to shape my process and imaginations of both the limitations and potentials of creating art that protects and fights for my community on a variety of levels. Grounded in developing platforms in which art can invigorate news forms of relations between higher forms of thought and community, I aim to convey that the ever-expanding battlefields of the 21st century have not imprisoned Indigenous peoples as merely survival artists - but rather illustrate the dynamic nature in which we actively combat these mutations of colonization.
PRESS
PROJECTS
THE BIKINI AND BIKINI
Currently, the bikini continues its tradition of surfing waves of toxicity, as a symbol for the over sexualization and objectification of female pro-surfers. This site specific installation holds a cornered space of silence for the history of Bikini and the bikini.
HAWAIIANS, UNITE.
Hawaiians Unite is a moving, short film made for MTV Entertainment Studios’ AAPI Heritage Month. It was created and directed by native Hawaiian filmmaker Nicole Naone. The idea derived from 18th century Hawaiian history, a time of warring chiefdoms between the islands.
MASS SERIES
The mass series existed as a means to process to a few life events occurring simultaneously in the Spring of 2010.
MAUNA FUJI
This video was included in a site-responsive multi-media installation for the KJ Baysa curated exhibition "Mauna Kea" as a part of the Honolulu Biennial selects program.
KALAOKE MĀUKA
In this site specific installation, Nicole Naone pairs footage of the 1983 Mākua Valley evictions with oli corresponding to its ahupuaʻa, with memorization and a loud voice being key elements to the art oli, Naone presents them perversely via another colonizer art form- Karaoke.
WOULD
A table that holds things below its surface. Function dictated by negative space. A carton of cigarettes, a sculpture by a friend, a flocked baby hammer, condom three pack, a salt and pepper shaker, a magazine, a tube of lip gloss - they live here in comfort because they’re supposed to.
POW!WOW!
Centered around a week-long event in Hawaii, POW! WOW! has grown into a global network of artists and organizes gallery shows, lecture series, schools for art and music, mural projects, a large creative space named Lana Lane Studios, concerts, and live art installations across the globe.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Furtado, Nicole. “Indigenous Futurisms.” The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom, 2024, pp. 26–33.
Franklin, Cynthia. “Narrating Humanity Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea.” Fordham University Press, New York, New York, 2023, p. 213.
Ikehara, Sam. “The Subaru Telescope and Inter-imperial Intimacies between Mauna Kea and Mt. Fuji.” Amerasia Journal, 49.3, 2023.
Furtado, Nicole K. “Chapter 9: Carving Identities in Cyberspace: Indigenous Virtual Reality.” Beyond Mimesis Aesthetic Experience in Uncanny Valleys, Rowman & Lifflefield Publishers, Lanham, Maryland, 2023, pp. 143–159.
Sato, Courtney. "Settler Colonial Projections: The Visual Politics of the Interwar Pan-Pacific Movement." Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 8 no. 2, 2022, p. 201-232
Steines, Margo. “The Artist Is Present.” Hawai’i Modern Luxury Magazine, 15 June 2018, p. 128.
Dekneef, Matthew. “Coming Into Being.” Contrast, 13 Sept. 2013, pp. 26–32.
Sanders, Jason. “To the Mauna: The 39th Hawai’i International Film Festival .” Filmmaker Magazine, 7 Feb. 2020
Poh, Jonathan. “The Art of Nicole Naone.” Hypebeast, Hypebeast, 11 Aug. 2012, hypebeast.com/2012/8/the-human-imagination-presents-the-art-of-nicole-naone