Join Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 artist Salote Tawale for an Artist Talk at Arts & Letters Gallery on Saturday, July 6 at 6pm. Tawale, a queer woman of color, understands her artworks as self-portraits. Working from the perspective of her Indigenous Fijian and Anglo-Australian heritage, Tawale’s practice-led research explores the identity of the individual within collective systems. She examines these through self-performance, collaboration, and community engagement projects that draw on personal experiences of race, class, ethnicity, and gender formed by growing up in suburban Australia.

Through her art, Tawale controls how she is seen and understood and where and how her image is used, using humor and play and shifting ways that challenge fixed ideas of identity and authenticity. Tawale’s work often has a warm sense of humor and humility as she thoughtfully creates new spaces for herself and others within the various cultures she is part of.