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CHOKE, by Dane Nakama

October 31 - December 13, 2026

Opening Reception 3-6pm, November 7, 2026

The window shattered first.

Kikaida had been trying to transform for hours. Outside, the
trees continued to break. The forecast showed another storm
behind this one. Then another. And another. I went looking for
batteries. I filled up the bathtub.

Before the wind got too loud, we could hear the planes. Uncle
said they were moving the ships out of Pearl Harbor again.
Aunty asked if it was because of the storm.

The flute kept playing. Kikaida held his head between his
hands, squeezing, like he was trying to make it pop. Poor thing
Kikaida, poor us. The flute kept playing.

By then the house was full. Choke slippers by the door. The
wind stealing most of them away. An explosion in the episode
seemed to shut off the TV. The curtains lifted. Rain fell across
his red and blue face.

Kikaida! Tasukete! TASUKETE!

Set against fears of increasingly destructive hurricanes in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, CHOKE is an exhibition of new works by Dane Nakama. The show unfolds between an approaching storm and a childhood television episode, where monsters enter the house and rescue becomes difficult to distinguish from threat.

Kikaida, an android superhero from the 1970s Japanese television series beloved in Hawaiʻi, was built to defend humans against destructive machines. His creator, Dr. Komyoji, left his conscience circuit unfinished. Intended to give him a human heart and the ability to choose right from wrong, the incomplete circuit leaves him vulnerable to the controlling sound of the evil Professor Gil’s flute.

Built to protect humans yet susceptible to commands that turn him against them, Kikaida reflects the hopes invested in artificial intelligence: a machine that promises to help us, but can accelerate our destruction. In Hawaiʻi, military presence is woven into everyday life: aircraft overhead, army vehicles on the freeway, uniforms at the market. What does it mean to live beside machinery meant to defend you, knowing it may also make your home a target?

In Hawaiʻi Pidgin, “choke” means many, or a lot: choke fish, choke storms, choke military, choke problems. The word carries the abundance of island life alongside a tightening throat. The future reaches us through forecasts and warnings. We listen for what is coming, trying to tell one sound from another.

Dane Hiʻipoi Nakama (b. 1999, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi) is a Japanese–Uchinanchu ceramicist, painter, and educator whose work bridges local aesthetics, folklore, and decolonial critique. Raised on Oʻahu, they are now based between Hawaiʻi and Los Angeles. Their interdisciplinary practice is both highly referential and disarmingly tender, addressing settler colonialism, ancestral memory, and cultural hybridity. They hold a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in ceramics from UCLA.

Regular Gallery Hours Friday and Saturday 11am-4pm
Email hafa@pileleprojects.org

Mylee Etuale
Ia Manatua
Installation view

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale
untitled (Mafutaga), 2026
72 x 60”
Acrylic on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
A-Line, 2026
45 x 34”
Acrylic on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
Ulaula i le ma’umaga (Smoking in the plantation), 2026
33 x 22”
Acrylic on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
Va’a i Salafai (Ferry to Savai’i), 2026
45 x 34”
Acrylic on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale, Ia Manatua
Installation view

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
what I really want, 2026
17 x 10.5”
acrylic and poly-cotton on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
maybe I will wait for you, 2026
15.5 x 21.5”
acrylic and dried pandanus leaf on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale,
I like you / I like how, 2026
18 x 15”
acrylic and poly-cotton on canvas

Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography

Mylee Etuale, Ia Manatua

Exhibition Opening, October 3, 2026 3-5pm

Regular Gallery Hours Friday and Saturday 11am-4pm , through October 24

Pilele Projects is thrilled to present Ia Manatua, Mylee Etuale’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, opening this coming Saturday, October 3, 2026, from 3-5pm.

Ia Manatua is a Samoan phrase which can be translated as to remember, or to recall. It incorporates a Samoan concept for memory combining the term mana, meaning sacred power or spiritual energy, and tua, meaning back or support. The word ia calls manatua into presence, defines it as an act rather than an abstract concept, and positions it in a system of relationality. For Etuale, the practice of painting enacts the practice of memory. Her images are drawn from her own experience of returning to Samoa from her life in Southern California diaspora, welcomed in family, but also unfamiliar with so much of the language and lifeways that connect her to her ancestral home. Her paintings evince patient observation, joyful participation, and a sense of place, placement, and displacement which are at once vulnerable and assertive. The underlying images are made of photographic fragments, but the paintings emerge from a layered and resolutely manual process which unifies them into singularly resonant emotional chords. Her figures are intimate, but also turned away or partially hidden, sometimes cropped just beyond the edges of her canvases, so that what is given is more a feeling than a person. Similarly, her treatment of color and texture produce a dense generosity at the surface of her paintings which is also the result of a calculated withholding of the kinds of realism that offer up a picture in a single glance. Her paintings do not so much hold her memories as caress them into the present.

Taotaomo'na (Ancestor) Portrait
October 14, 2023

Sid M. Duenas
New Nuebu Call Back
February 24 - April 30, 2024

Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Queer Theirstories of Polynesia
May 12 - July 28, 2024

UNFORGETTING
September 28 - Dec 7, 2024

Taotao’mona Portraits: Mali’e Inetnon
March 29 - May 10, 2025

JP / Jason Pereira
Tā Vā: a prism of time through space May 17 - June 14, 2025

Isa Gagarin
I Hagan Sirena (Daughter of Sirena)
June 28 - August 9, 2025

Sequoia Tangerine Kimmel
Melilt l ak ngiltii a kotek
November 15, 2025 - January 31, 2026

Sid M. Duenas and Isa Gagarin
Talåyan Langhet
May 16 - June 27, 2026

Mylee Etuale
Ia Manatua
August 22 - October 24, 2026

Pilele Projects3307A West Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90018

Gallery hours 11am - 4pm Friday and Saturday
See Current
Appointments can be made by email or direct message on our Instagram page.

hafa@pileleprojects.org

Founded by Mariquita “Micki” Davis and Edward Sterrett, Pilele Projects is an exhibition and workshop space dedicated to supporting projects by Pasifika artists in Southern California. We are working towards developing grant funded residencies for artists, cultural practitioners, curators, and scholars emerging from and focused on Pacific Island cultures and their diasporas.

Pilele Projects takes its name from Micki’s Chamoru Grandfather who ran a Mom and Pop store and Laundro-mat in post-war Guam. The store was beloved in the village for being more than a convenience. It was a community center, a place for ceremonies, and a support for local artisans.

Pilele Projects is fiscally sponsored by Kutturan CHamoru Foundation, a 501(c)3 charitable organization. If you would like to make a fully tax deductible donation please contact us at hafa@pileleprojects.org