Kealohi Wean

Lives and works in Queens, N.Y., USA

Artist statement

My name is Ke’alohi Wean, Lohi for short. I’m an artist living and working in Queens. Using mostly graphite and colored pencil, my style takes inspiration from cartoons, comics, and weird online media. I want to talk about desire, obsession, nostalgia, and identity - instincts and feelings being manipulated as tools of consumption, and how we can reclaim them as sources of connection and creativity. My practice is a mix of big feelings, nostalgia, and hyperfixation - Sex, drugs, gender, and politics. A sense of humor, a tongue in the cheek, a lip dragged between the teeth. Hedonism and Communalism are not opposing forces. Desire is good, actually. Do you desire a better world as much as pussy? Drawing from pop culture, online aesthetics, and personal experience, I trace how love, lust, and identity are used against us. Passion is human, and often manipulated. Rather than condemning these tendencies as unproductive, my work insists on their generative potential. Favorites: The Last Unicorn (1982), The Far Side, Footrot Flats, Futurama, Adventure Time, House of Wax (2005), The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, Sarah Squirm, Garfield, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Calvin and Hobbes, Clive Barker, Jim Henson, What’s Your Number (2011), Living rooms, Otherkin, Fanfiction, Youtube video essays, Trips to the beach, Antique stores, Dive bars, Testosterone, Surgery

Artwork