Iwalani Kaluhiokalani is an American painter whose work centers movement in both subject matter and process. She uses her in-depth knowledge of dance history and movement analysis to engineer rhythmic dialogues that mediate the moving image, semiotics, and time. Using found photos and film stills replete with imagery related to dance, she collages positive and negative silhouettes into figurative groupings. She paints from these cutouts in a printmaking-like process, rapidly repeating similar forms at various intervals. The resulting landscapes perform like choreography with phrasings of shape and color simultaneously recording and transmitting the artist’s movements across a surface.

Iwalani was a 2021 BCA ACTivate Resident.

Iwalani spent the ACTivate Residency creating a grouping of layered paintings. The installation, scaled to respond to the architecture of the space, celebrated how space is entered and also how people move through space.