Grandpa’s Pua

Parsons The New School for Design
BFA Photography Thesis Exhibition

Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery

April 25 - May 4, 2022

Grandpa’s Pua is a body of photographic work consisting of inkjet prints and a completely hand-stitched two-foot-square quilt by Kaycie Lyn Hiroko “Keikilani” Matsukado. In Grandpa’s Pua themes of landscape, family, and identity are explored at their intersections through the lens of the culture of Hawaiʻi. The objectives of this thesis are to examine and visualize the personal identity away from a culturally understood inherent Western whiteness. Through engaging in cultural practice and craft, this thesis rejects defining an identity along the lines of Western whiteness while also confronting the concept at its roots. Grandpa’s Pua exists at the intersections of multiple points in history and the contemporary. Matsukado’s work critiques the historical and contemporary gaze placed upon Hawaiʻi and posits what visualizations of non-Western, non-white identities can look like in the Western world, in institutions, in culture, and in history.