ORIENTATION
Juvana Soliven

June 20 – July 22, 2026
opening June 20th 6pm

Aupuni Space is proud to present Orientation, a solo exhibition by Juvana Soliven – her second with the gallery.

Suggesting a sense of direction and position, Orientation is an installation of new works that frustrate architectural conventions to speak to ways of belonging and ways of being. Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, which examines how spaces may lend themselves to be more accessible to some bodies over others, this installation considers the slantwise. Ahmed’s use of phenomenology — the study of the conscious experience through personal perception — as a tool in queer studies examines the slantwise as an orientation that is off the “accepted path”.

Jalousie windows, a fixture of the architectural vernacular of Hawaiʻi’s homes, actualize this slantwise orientation — diagonal lines cut through the threshold between our private lives and outward personas, creating imperfect separation. They offer disrupted images from any perspective. Soliven’s jalousies are reshaped through a kiln-forming process of slumping, which warps flat sheets of glass with heat and gravity. Furthering the disruption of the slantwise orientation, these distortions suggest the imperfection inherent in any chosen system. The effect of gravity on these forms parallels the weight of structural pressure with the emotional and physical toll of socialized expectations.

Constructed with fused glass panels creating pixelated bodily forms, the installation transforms a viewing space into a reflection and presentation of the self. It poses questions of emotional transparency and opacity, interior and exterior worlds, who is in and who is out, and how we navigate states of disorientation when we don’t know which direction we are facing.

Orientation affirms the slantwise as an opportunity to reclaim and reconfigure our own self-presentation; to recognize power in a refusal to conform to straightforward approaches, clear views, and strict structures.


“[...] Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of sexual orientation and the “orient” in “orientalism”, Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time.  Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer phenomenology reveals how social relations are arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following accepted paths, and how politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at first glance, seem awry.”

Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Duke University Press, 2006.