Adrienne Keahi Pao

Pao was born in 1975 in Oakland, California.[1] Her mother is French and English and her father is native Hawaiian.[1] Growing up, Pao went back to Hawai'i at least once a year with her father to visit family in Kailua.[1] Much of her work draws off of her experiences as a multiracial Hawaiian.

Her father gave her an old camera when she was fifteen or sixteen and fell in love with photography.[1]

Pao received an MFA in photography from San Jose State University in 2005.[1]

Her photography has been featured in many museums. From July 16 to August 28, 2009, Pao's photography was presented in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's exhibition, Pipeline: Art, Surfing, and the Ocean Environment.[2] The exhibition included her color photography that were reminiscent of "travel posters" to critique the exoticization of the islands' environment and people.[2] On October 30, 2014, Pao's photography was included in Hawai'i Contemporary's exhibition, Chain of Fire.[3][4] In 2016, the Chain of Fire exhibit, including Pao's work, was featured in Tokyo's Mori Art Museum.[5] Her work has also been exhibited at Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery in the Bronx, New York; the Balcony Gallery in Kailua, Hawai'i; the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco; Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Caixa Cultural in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[1]

Pao collaborated with Robin Lasser, another artist, on a series of installations and photographs titled Dress Tent.[6] The Dress Tents are large-scale pieces of clothing installed on specific Hawaiian landscapes and worn by female subjects.[6] The pieces serve as critiques on a variety of themes, including gender, immigration policy, and environmental degradation, among others.[6] Pao's most famous piece is within the Dress Tent series, titled Dashboard Hula Girl: In Search of Aunty Keahi.[6] The piece consists of a tan colored raffia skirt, standing over ten feet tall and fourteen feet in diameter, that was meant to simultaneously embody a hula skirt and a traditional Hawaiian grass hut.[6][7] During the performance, women climbed out from the skirt and "transformed into a living, breathing, animated representation of the dashboard hula girl."[6] The installation reflects Pao's own personal journey and experiences as a multiracial Hawaiian, serving as a way for her to “reclaim her gaze of home."[6] In the second part of the exhibit, Pao emphasized ancestral connections via an immersive exhibition of visuals and sounds.[6] It centers around a recording of the chant “‘Eia o Ka Lani Ka Manomano” (“Here is the Chief, the Great One”) that Pao's father found in the Smithsonian archives.[6] In 2017, Dashboard Hula Girl: In Search of Aunty Keahi was featured in the Smithsonian's Culture Lab exhibition "Ae Kai: A Culture Lab on Convergence."[6][8]