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Melissa Chimera

@melissachimera

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Landcare x Art x Land & People Podcast
@hawaiicontemporary @honolulumuseum @arabamericanmuseum @sharjahart @hawaii_sfca @anchoragemuseum @ctahr

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

We're excited to announce the launch of Season 5 of the Land and People podcast!

Co-hosts @melissachimera & @claytrau are back, and this season they're focused on Oʻahu and the water issues that have been top of mind for so many after this year's extreme weather.

In our Season 5 premiere, we’re joined by Barry Usagawa, Water Resources Program Administrator at @bwshonolulu, who shares about watershed stewardship, extreme rainfall and flood response, climate adaptation, and the value of community-led, mauka-to-makai management of water systems on Oʻahu.

Search for "Land and People" on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, or iHeartRadio.

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MS ALIGNED 5 available OCT 15, 2026!
Honored and so proud to be co-editor with @patmatsueda of the MS ALIGNED 5 anthology featuring the superb, stunning cover art of @melissachimera and introduction by @bookstapode of @sparklebookstore, with contributors:
Tia Ballantine, @kara_briggs_mfa, @jillscribe @tacita610, Linda Liem, @lumchanmfa, Adele Na Jame, Ann Pancake, Tracy Robert, @manuscriptdoula, George Tsakraklides, Emily Viglielmo, @iblieveindragons

theme: Fear and Masculinity
Ms Aligned features work by authors who identify as women or nonbinary: poetry, essays, short fiction, and interviews that are written in a male voice or featuring a prominent male character.
MS ALIGNED 5 explores work exploring emotional vulnerability, confronting hostile cultural standards of gender or impediments to the full expression of self.
Published by El Leon Literary Arts and Manoa Books.

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Titled "We Are the Sea," this painting by @melissachimera incorporates a map of #lebanon🇱🇧 and appears in the feature "Women in Times of Conflict." Curated by Lebanese American poet Adele Ne Jame, the collection includes powerful work by ten writers and visual artists responding to war and its tragic consequences.
See https://www.hawaii.edu/vice-versa/women-in-times-of-conflict/.

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Thrilled that the stunning art of @melissachimera will be an integral part of the upcoming MsAligned 5 issue.
As a Board Member of the MsAligned series, I'm continually inspired and astounded by our artistic and literary contributors. Their visions and voices guide, challenge, trouble, and uplift us.
Grateful to all the MsAligned contributors of past and present issues. More on MsAligned 5 soon!

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Dark and Stormy🌧️

Nothing about these storms is sitting right with me.
#konalow

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Tiffany’s Pick Thursday 🖌️

This week I’m drawn to Moananuiakea by Melissa Chimera!

I love work that tells a deeper story. The figure paddling forward across layered silk screened nets, surrounded by numbers referencing latitudes and longitudes of Pacific island nations. It’s breathtaking both visually and conceptually.

Melissa invites us to imagine an alternate cartography that transcends political and geographic distinctions between people of the canoe. Moananuiakea, the blue continent pulls these island nations together across the vast ocean, reminding us of shared heritage and connection.

The combination of oil, mixed media, and silk stitched serigraph creates incredible texture and depth. The delicate layering feels both fragile and strong, much like the connections between island communities across the Pacific.🌀

Available at Tiffany’s Art Agency

Shop the website for pricing and details. You can even try the pieces to scale on your wall

Link in bio for details📲

@melissachimera
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#tiffanyspick #melissachimera #hawaiiart #artcollector

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As we wrap up Filipino American History Month, we mahalo you all for celebrating with us! 🇵🇭✨ For our final Art in Public Places highlight, we’re featuring Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo by Melissa Chimera, a deeply personal work honoring the Filipino laborers and ancestors who helped shape Hawaiʻi’s history.

Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo by Melissa Chimera
oil, ink, and silk on linen, 2018

Born and raised in Hawai‘i, artist Melissa Chimera is a descendant of Filipino and Lebanese immigrants. Her artwork often reflects her interest and research into conservation, globalization and human migration. In Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo, Chimera portrays two male ancestors combined as a single figure. An image of the artist’s grandfather, Teodulo, is layered upon an image of the artist’s great-grandfather, Segundo. Words and dates were scanned from the ship manifest, documenting Teodulo’s arrival in Hawai‘i and Segundo’s date of death, and then applied to the painting’s surface. Both ancestors lived their years in Hawai‘i on sugar plantations, from their arrival to Honolulu until their departure from or passing in the plantation camps. [continued in the comments]

To learn more about this piece and others in the Art in Public Places Collection, visit SFCA.Hawaii.gov/app-art.

#CapitolModern #FilipinoAmericanHistoryMonth #Filipino #HawaiiArt #HawaiiArtist #CapitolModernHawaii #HawaiiStateArtMuseum #ArtInPublicPlaces #ArtInPublicPlacesCollection #SupportLocalArtists

Reel features Cane Fields, Teodulo and Segundo by Melissa Chimera, a layered oil, ink, and silk painting depicting two Filipino ancestors and elements of plantation life, honoring immigrant laborers in Hawaiʻi.

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@mauiforpalestine 30 days for Palestine - Day 15 - Create something

Today we celebrated my daughter’s 14th birthday, so I was unable to be at home creating. But, to prepare for adorning some kapa I’ve beaten for a special project, I have been using this sample sheet to test pigment colors and also the new ʻohe kāpala from my braddah Nalu @namakakahiko who comes through for me every time. In the actual pieces, I will probably stamp in tones of earth pigment, but I always try my new stamps with paʻu kukui black first. So this is a practice creation to prepare for a real creation. 😆

I can’t wait to see what others created today.

May our collective creations help to create an end to this genocide. 🇵🇸

#30daysforGAZA #30daysforPalestine #freepalestine

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@mauiforpalestine 30 days for Palestine - Day 14 - Mutual Aid!

W A I W A I
It’s wild to think that the majority of the wars and genocides on the planet come down to money and/or land as a means to make money or expand settler colonies (extractive capitalism is so tired 🙄). Yet money means nothing if you’ve no clean water to drink, and land is only activated into ʻāina (that which feeds) through wai. Our ancestors’ concept of wealth—waiwai—is as crystal clear an acknowledgment of this as you can ever have.

Since today is mutual aid day, I donated once more to three different folks. I’ve donated almost every week for two years (some weeks multiple times), as it’s been the only thing that takes away any amount of the agony of bearing witness to this genocide on a daily basis. However, from the beginning of this horrific period, I remember distinctly wishing that I could take those who had suffered to the river I frequent and let the water soothe their souls and take their pain away. When people were becoming thirsty because 90% of the water infrastructure was gone, my desire shifted to wanting to bring them cool, clean water to drink.

Of course I can’t do any of this, but it is where my mind goes. It goes to human rights and the right each person has to clean, safe drinking water and enough water to irrigate their traditional crops. I pray that settlers stop pouring concrete into springs to strangle the lifeblood from Palestinian farms. I also pray that our very own lawmakers and water commission wakes up and restores enough stream flow that mahiʻai on Maui have sufficient wai for their loʻi, māla, and any agricultural projects they want to pursue. It is only right.

I hope you have donated to folks today. Check my stores for links to specific people and projects, but also know that anything and everything helps. I sent an email a while back and I am happy to forward that on to anyone interested.

#30daysforGAZA #30daysforPalestine #freepalestine

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#mygirls👭 #waikiki #oahu #thegatheringplace #goodtimes ♥️🥰🌺

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Missed a site—or want to revisit #HawaiiTriennial2025 (HT25) from anywhere? 🌎✨ You can still experience HT25 on @BloombergConnects, the free arts & culture guide! 🎉📲

Explore the full exhibition through artwork images and exhibition labels—paired with rich storytelling that brings the experience to life, wherever you are. From Oʻahu to Maui to Hawaiʻi Island, the spirit of ALOHA NŌ lives on. 🌺🌊

Curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi (@wassan16), Binna Choi (@choi.binna), and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu (@noellekahanu), HT25 invites you to (re)know Hawai‘i through contemporary art as a practice of care, resistance, and transformation.

HOW TO ACCESS:
View online or 📲 download the app (link in bio), search Hawai‘i Contemporary, and start exploring.

What you’ll find:
📍 Multi-site exhibition guide
🗣 Multilingual content
🖼 Artwork images + labels
🌐 Accessible anytime, anywhere

New audio content coming soon—stay tuned as we share more stories across the Pacific.

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