Hoʻākea Source 2026 Grant Awardees

Dardarat

Lydia Querian
2026 Visual Art Grant Recipient

Dardarat (Ilocano for “flow”) is an immersive dance-ritual fashion performance by Lydia Querian, a Filipina diasporic dance artist, fashion designer, and cultural producer, and descendant of Sakada plantation workers in Hawaiʻi. Created for the framework of ʻike kūpuna and Indigenous resurgence, this work emerges from ancestral memory, dreamspace, and ocean movement. As a Sakada descendant living in Hawaiʻi, Querian honors Filipino plantation laborers while situating their histories within a wider constellation of Indigenous Pacific relationships.

Working under her artist name and fashion practice Elle Karayan, Querian centers the body as archive where land (ʻāina/lupa), water (wai/tubig), wind (makani), fire (ahi), ancestry, and futurity are carried through breath and motion. Through contemporary diasporic Pilipino movement, kulintang soundscapes, and ritualized fashion, Dardarat unfolds as a ceremonial offering. The stage transforms into a shared healing ground: a runway and dance space activated by walking prayer, memorial garments, and embodied remembrance. Each performer carries stories of migration, rupture, resilience, and interwoven Indigenous wisdom across the Philippines, Hawaiʻi, and the greater Pacific.

Grounded in long-term relationships with culture bearers in the Philippines and ongoing dialogue with Kanaka Maoli artists and practitioners, Querian’s practice honors distinct genealogies while nurturing responsible collaboration. Dardarat acknowledges the disintegration wrought by colonization and plantation economies, while imagining repair through collective breath, gathering, and reweaving.