Today we’d like to introduce you to Kalani Tonga Tukuafu.
Hi Kalani, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I moved to Utah in 2019, and through an old friend from Texas, I got involved with a nonprofit organization called Pacific Island Knowledge 2 Action Resources (PIK2AR). I started volunteering as a peer-to-peer support group facilitator, and our Women’s Empowerment Group partnered with Art Access to hold open studio nights in their studio space where we could go for art therapy or just to create with our friends and family members. I started participating in open studio nights each week.
PIK2AR hosts the National Pacific Islander Violence Prevention Conference each year, and when the conference came around, our executive director asked that anyone who had created artwork at open studio bring a piece of their work to contribute to a silent auction for the cause. I brought a couple of my paintings, and, much to my surprise, they were extremely well-received, and from this single event people started asking me to commission artwork for them.
Fast forward about a year and a half, and my husband unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at work. All of a sudden, I was a widowed mother of five and needed a way to supplement my income in order to keep my family afloat. I started applying for any and all arts opportunities and grants, and I have had the extreme good fortune to have been chosen for a variety of opportunities, including murals, public art commissions, exhibitions, and even a fellowship with the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. Through these opportunities, I have sold works to the State of Utah’s private Alice Merrill Horne Art Collection, and I have been blessed with the resources to sustain my family during this difficult time.
Today, I am a working professional artist, and I am also the director of Pasifika Enriching Arts of Utah (PEAU), a nonprofit organization geared toward helping Pacific Islander creatives in Utah hone and monetize their skills and perpetuate and promote their culture. My journey into art was a pretty expedited one, all things considered, but it also feels like an entire lifetime ago that I was doing anything other than creating art!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think art has really been the constant smooth part of my journey, and the glue that has held all of the other pieces of my life together during a very, very challenging time. The death of my husband at the beginning of 2021 really shook me to my very foundation and changed my life completely literally overnight. I went to bed as a wife and I was working part-time to make the “fun money” that we used to buy “extras” that Finau’s paycheck couldn’t accommodate, and I woke up as a widow and the sole provider for my family of 6.
The night before Finau passed away, I was working on a piece that, after his passing, I named “The Last Sunset.” I was finishing some details of the painting in gold paint the night before he passed, and Finau really wanted me to go to Wendover with him (he was a gambler, and I am definitely NOT!). He told me, “Your gold paint is going to bring us good luck! Let’s go!” I think about that statement a lot, and recognize how lucky I have been, despite the challenges that have arisen in my life. It has been the absolute heartbreak of my life to lose my best friend so young, and when I think about the many years, I may have left in my life to live without him, sometimes I don’t feel very lucky. But then I think about how Finau could have had that same heart attack while driving my kids on the freeway. Or at home with the kids there to witness it. And, suddenly I realize that we are actually very blessed. Additionally, I do feel like my paint has brought my family luck. It has helped us put food on the table and clothes on our backs and kept a roof over our head. So, while the road of life has not been smooth for me, art has been a constant source of “smoothness” when the road has gotten rocky.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I like to say that my art is a physical manifestation of my “hafekasi weirdness.” Hafekasi is a Tongan word that means “half cast” and is used to describe anyone who is biracial or multiracial. My mom’s family is Swedish and my dad’s family is Tongan, and growing up I never really felt like I truly belonged in either of those worlds, but I also didn’t NOT fit in either. I think it’s hard to explain unless you live with one foot in multiple communities. I didn’t really set out to be weird with my art, but I think that as I tried to create traditional Pacific Island patterns, they just naturally came out in non-traditional ways, much like the rest of me! I’ve embraced the unusualness of my style, and I’ve recently begun incorporating some of the traditional Scandinavian/Swedish patterns into my work as well.
I think I’m most proud of the way that my work allows others in my community — specifically the growing population of “half casts” who don’t feel a true sense of belonging in the mainstream community OR in the Pacific Islander community — to feel seen and to see themselves in the art world. Growing up in a small town in Texas, I did not see Pacific Islanders in any professional creative capacity until I was in college. My own children will never have that experience because I’ve made a place for them and I’ve given them visual anchors all across the city to look back to when then need a confidence boost. I’m proud of my murals and of the public art that will be visible where Pacific Islanders can see themselves reflected back in the world around them. I currently have a public art piece being fabricated as part of the Life on State project that will include a large neon sign with traditional Pacific Islander patterns on it. It will be installed as one of 8 such signs that will represent the diverse nature of Salt Lake City and the history of Life on State Street. I’m very proud and excited to be able to represent the contributions of Pacific Islanders to the history of this community.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I guess the one thing I’d like to add is that most of my success has come because of my willingness to put myself out there and just try, not necessarily because I am the most talented or skilled. Any time I put myself out there to apply for grants or projects that seem a bit beyond my current abilities, I just think to myself, “hey, someone is going to get this commission/grant. Might not be me. But, also, it MIGHT be me. I might as well just try.” This attitude has turned a little open studio fun into a professional career for me. So just try. Because you never know what that attempt might bring into your life.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kalanitonga.designs
