Our next inspiring artist is Vaimoana Niumeitolu born in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, raised in Hawai’i and Utah, based in New York, NY, she earned her undergraduate degree from New York University in painting and performance, the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in painting & drawing at the Yale University Summer School of Music and Art, and attended Columbia University’s graduate program in theatre. A founding member of Decolonize This Place, Niumeitolu is also a founding member of AKA Exit and Mahina Movement—an all BIPOC women/trans music and poetry trio who has performed on over 700 stages. Niumeitolu has written, performed in, and directed numerous theatrical productions at venues including New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Harvard University. She has created over 24 community murals across the world, in Australia, Kenya, Jordan, New Zealand, Palestine, South Africa, and the United States. She has been seen acting at the Metropolitan Opera and sharing her one woman show, Tongue-in Paint, which had it’s world premiere at Performance Space 122; NYC. Niumeitolu is the author of a poetry, performance text, and visual art chapbook, tonga provo harlem. Through her ongoing work with youth, she fosters communities and activism.
Led by CAMP, Manifest Differently is a new project developed by Megan Wilson and Kim Shuck. Over the next year, 2023/24, we’ll be working together with 38 diverse, multigenerational visual/media artists and poets to interrogate the history of Manifest Destiny and its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction. The outgrowth of resistance and resilience – giving fire to movements for social/ culture change. The project will be presented in 2023/24 at three locations – Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP), Artists’ Television Access (ATA), and Minnesota Street Project.
