It’s going to be impossible to put Mario Lemafa into a few words. Lemafa’s preferred pronoun is “they,” and they are many identities—queer, working class, a native Hawaiian of Samoan descent who, in childhood, moved 15 times in the state of Washington alone. Their art is any medium that is close at hand and doesn’t require studio space, from manipulated aloha shirts and tropical-scented cleaning solutions to dreamily looped and layered digital collages to performances of restless bodies.
So we start with the easiest question—that Pokémon hat.
“I gotta be real with you, I love Pokémon, it’s what I grew up with,” Lemafa says.
That doesn’t mean Lemafa is spending any time currently playing Pokémon GO. “There’s just so much going on in the world.”
What some people might consider “homelessness”—all that moving around as a youth—was for Lemafa alchemized by the fact that there were people all over the place willing to take them in. The fact that they have people. Thus they have places.
Lemafa studied photomedia at the University of Washington, but they began in performance (their first kiss was as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, folks). Lemafa still unites people in a room through art.
Mario Lemafa will be celebrated at the free Stranger Genius Awards party on September 24 at the Moore Theatre. Five artists will go home with $5,000 each, no strings attached, thanks to our generous sponsors. To see all 15 nominees this year, go to thestranger.com/genius2016.
