Hoʻākea Source 2025 Grant Awardees

Babaeng Babae Na

Hercules Goss-Kuehn
2025 Grant Recipient

Babaeng Babae Na is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the artist’s gender transition through their PasifiQueer lens. The journey will weave activations of site-specific performance art, audio/visual media, and facilitating community dialogues. The work affirms the sacredness of the third-gender and trans+ experiences and counters vitriolic narratives of gender fluidity.

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Hercules Goss-Kuehn (she/they/’o ia/siya) is a multi-disciplinary artist, organizer, and event producer whose work explores migration, futurity, language, and identity. A queer, mixed-race individual from generational Deaf families, Hercules integrates lived experiences with art to interrogate systems of power, gender identity, belonging, and decolonization.

Their practice encompasses writing, photography, DJing, audiovisual work, performance, and movement; drawing on training in wushu, contemporary dance, bboy/house, club, yorchha, pole, burlesque, drag, ballroom, hula, and danza azteca. Raised in Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota) with their Scandinavian father’s family, Hercules frequently traveled to O’ahu and Moku o Keawe growing up to spend time with their mother’s local Ilocano and Choctaw family. They are currently based in the Hono'uli'uli Ahupua'a.

Hercules celebrates queer narratives through projects that blend personal history, communal solidarity, and transformative justice, asserting, "I am allowed to exist; thus, you are allowed to exist."