About

Artist Statement (if we're feeling fancy) Kahu Ekalani is a Los Angeles and PNW-based analog photographer specializing in surreal conceptual portraits. She derives inspiration from shapes, lighting, and color found in the natural world, and aims to evoke feelings of a more curated version of those same elements in her body of work. In her surreal portraits, she deconstructs identity, layering the familiar human form with unexpected textures, dreamlike distortions, and symbolisms. These images serve as visual meditations on memory, vulnerability, and the unconscious. Each portrait is an invitation to confront the self not as it is, but how it feels, in moments of transformation. These photographs combine the surreal and the elemental, where the inner landscapes of the mind meet the raw, unfiltered grandeur of the natural world. Through two seemingly different approaches, she explores the tension between control and surrender, the psychological and the physical, the imaginary and the real. She aims to create images that stretch beyond documentation to evoke feeling, disorientation, and wonder. And to present a mise-en-scéne that provides the opportunity, for some, to recognize their own joy, power and suffering in frame.