Nicole Naone is a weapon of Kanaka Maoli and Korean ancestry 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.
As a Sundance Institute Indigenous Program alumna, Naoneʻs most notable cinema credits include producing short film Lahaina Noon (2014) and the multi award winning scripted feature film 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).
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 Hawaiian bones and artifacts with Hui Iwi Kuamoo.
ARTIST
STATEMENT
My ancestors were tacticians and warriors who understood that the survival of our people required more than endurance— it demanded strategy, adaptability, and action. My existence is a result of their resistance, and my practice is a continuation of theirs.
I engage with various mediums, selecting each based on strategic utility. My approach is fluid yet deliberate, always seeking the precise point where pressure can be applied to unsettle, shift, and reveal. Some pieces are built to bear the weight of historical erasure, making visible what has been deliberately obscured. Others act as interventions— subtle and intentional disruptions that course-correct false narratives.
My work does not engage with the past as a site of nostalgia, nor does it seek reconciliation within colonial paradigms. It is the continuation of Indigenous resistance through methodologies of refusal, resurgence, and survivance—ensuring that what must endure is preserved, what must fall is dismantled, and that space is made for what comes next.
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
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
