September 29, 2020
by Shilpa Shah
Kira Dominguez Hultgren, a Bay Area-based textile artist whose multicultural background is represented in her work, takes an anthropological approach in her weaving. Not only is her woven work indicative of her family’s cultural history, it also reveals themes of identity, colonialism, evolution, migration, and exoticism. Dominguez Hultgren focuses her work on the global migration of textile patterning, which is internalized by the history of her family’s migration.
Dominguez Hultgren’s grandmother, Lawhaii (Kikume) Johal, was born and raised in Hawaii. Although she was the daughter of a half-Black, half-White mother and an Indian father, she grew up believing she was native Hawaiian and culturally performing as such, often by wearing flowers in her hair suggestive of hula girls. This identity was partially shaped by Lawhaii’s uncle Al Kikume and mother Whakaii Kikume, who both acted in Hollywood films as embodiments of native Hawaiians. Yet, it is arguable whether their manifestation of native Hawaiianess is authentic or simply the product of colonialism. Offscreen, Al Kikume changed his original last name, Gozier Jackson, to one that sounded more Hawaiian. Records on the U.S. Census sheet also show Kikume’s “Color or Race” selection crossed out twice—first marked as “Neg” for Negro and another time possibly, but unclearly, marked as “Fil” for Filipino. Either way, both crossed out selections with no alternative suggest a negation of his racial identity. This further leads Dominguez Hultgren to question if Hollywood is responsible for authoring her uncle and grandmother’s Hawaiian identities.
