Adriana Māhanga-Lear

Dr Adriana Māhanga Lear (she/they) is a queer Tongan-‘Australian’ interdisciplinary artist working across sound, music, photography, print, video, sculpture, and installation. Her research-led practice (re)awakens Tongan concepts and practices of ongo (sounding/hearing/feeling), relating to mate (death), hoa (pairs, relationality) and fonua (people and place/environment). Adriana engages concepts of mana (spiritual power) and tapu (social tools relating to the sacred) to perform embodied ‘re-soundings’ of the archive, which interrogate colonial legacies of Eurocentrism and heteropatriarchy within the Tongan context. Central to her practice, is a visual and sonic experimentation with kupesi as a Tongan concept/practice of motif, pattern, design, symbolism, and identity.

Adriana’s work has been acquired by Sydney Powerhouse, Wollongong Art Gallery, and Auckland Libraries, NZ. She has presented solo exhibitions at Liverpool Powerhouse (2024), Wollongong Art Gallery (2025) and Māngere Arts Centre (2025), and group exhibitions at Pātaka Art+Museum (2026), East-Hawai’i Cultural Centre (2025–26), and Blue Mountains Cultural Centre (2025).

Adriana was awarded the 2025 Australian Association of Pacific Studies Award for her PhD creative research project, which she is currently publishing into a monograph with the University of Hawai’i Press. Adriana is also a leading author of the Indigenous Tongan Tā-Vā Philosophy of Art, which underpins her practice.