Sean Connelly: Expert Witness Geomancer Mystic

An Expert Witness Geomancer Mystic, as the artist describes, unites the forensic, spatial, and mystical elements of a place, giving testimony to concealed histories while constructing profound truths. They go beyond interpreting land to co-create spaces that are independent, sacred, and ecologically aligned, to protect and restore places as active sites of truth, continuity, and renewal. In this presentation, Hawai'i artist and building practitioner Sean Connelly of After Oceanic shares critical and projective work around creating “architecture for ‘āina” revealing a long disregarded history of US urbanism in Hawai'i and the community grassroots networks of collaborative care and native resurgence working to recover indigenous systems of sustenance for the future.

Sean Connelly (Pacific Islander American / Ilocano) creates collaborative, decolonial interventions in sculpture, architecture, film, and cartography to advance Native liberation in Hawai‘i. Born, residing, and working in Honolulu, Kona, O‘ahu, he integrates ancestral knowledge, ecological insight, and social justice to promote intergenerational healing, food sovereignty, and cultural resurgence. Rooted in the ocean-earth-island-cosmos reality of Hawai‘i, Connelly engages built environments as living archives, shaping sovereign, transformative futures for all.