An ‘expert witness geomancer mystic’ 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, protecting and restoring places as active sites of continuity and renewal. In this talk, Hawai’i artist and building practitioner Sean Connelly of After Oceanic shares critical and projective work around creating “architecture for ‘āina”. This work reveals 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, they integrate 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 and transformative futures for all.
An ‘expert witness geomancer mystic’ 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, protecting and restoring places as active sites of continuity and renewal. In this talk, Hawai’i artist and building practitioner Sean Connelly of After Oceanic shares critical and projective work around creating “architecture for ‘āina”. This work reveals 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.