Nu'a Bon

Lives and works in Santa Fe, NM, USA

Artist statement

Profoundly shaped by my Asian and Pasifika heritage, my work mirrors a world unsettled by climate disruption, political unrest, and the legacies of colonisation. Across painting, video, text, and digitally mediated archival materials, I create site-based works that transform rupture—geological and historical—into form. My ongoing project, Haʻalulu: Tremors, extends a decade of painting at sites marked by conflict and calamity. Working directly on the land, I place unstretched linen across deserts, coastlines, and ancient villages so that volcanic ash, desert soils, and atmospheric traces bind into the surface. These paintings are joined by archival fragments that I digitise, layer, and recontextualise, amplifying suppressed histories and connecting them to the materiality of place. Together, these works map fault lines as both seismic fractures and social ruptures: from broken treaties and forced migrations to anti-immigrant violence and ecological collapse. Earlier projects such as ícaro: medicine songs remain integral to this practice. After study with Amazonian plant-spirit medicine practitioners, I began to translate the resonance of healing chants into contemporary abstraction. That inquiry into sound, memory, and collective healing continues now through the tremors of North America’s landscapes. Across installations, paintings, and books, I seek to honour the land as a living archive and co-author. My Pasifika understanding of place and Asian diasporic perspective on...

Artwork