Blood Quantum
Şerife (Sherry) Wong
Şerife Wong is a Turkish-Hawaiian conceptual artist and leads Icarus Salon, an art and research initiative on politics, culture, and technology.
Artist BioThis project examines ways of knowing through exploring the history and impacts of blood quantum policy in Hawaii. Over 100 years ago, sugar companies lobbied the U.S. government to institute a 50% blood quantum rule for kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians) to receive land leases— a requirement that is still enacted and dividing communities today.
As a critique of blood logic, the artist documents her attempts to prove ancestry by navigating the current bureaucracy. Concurrently, she collects family memories of life on their Waimanalo farm and interviews researchers and activists offering alternative approaches to knowledge. She weaves these narratives into a digital and physical art installation incorporating video, painting, historical photos, and documents. The artist situates Hawaiian concepts of kinship and lineage with discourses on AI, data governance, and colonialism. Operating critically within and beyond art contexts, the project resists institutionalized colonial frameworks of knowledge reliant on rigid quantification. Rather than just increasing visibility, it argues for epistemic justice by asserting the validity of relational and expansive knowledge systems.
Creative Capital Carnival 2024
Şerife (Sherry) Wong
San Francisco, California
Şerife (Sherry) Wong received the Creative Capital Award in 2024. Şerife (Sherry) Wong is a Turkish-Hawaiian conceptual artist. She leads Icarus Salon, an art and research initiative on politics, culture, and technology. She creates transdisciplinary social sculptures, performative public work, happenings, and interactive web-based work using research and activism as a medium of art. Her work primarily investigates AI, data, power, labor and belief. She is an affiliate at O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing; an affiliate research scientist at Kidd Lab, UC Berkeley; serves on the board of directors for Gray Area; and is the culture and AI governance lead at the Tech Diplomacy Network. Her advocacy work for justice in AI and more active roles for artists in policymaking has been recognized through several awards: a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, a research fellowship at the Berggruen Institute, Mozilla Creative Award, a residency at the Media Enterprise Design Lab, and she was listed as one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics in 2021.
Şerife has frequently collaborated with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford to bridge art with the social sciences. She has served on the jury committees for Burning Man, Ars Electronica, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Previously, she was an Artist in Residence and co-creator of the Impact Program at Autodesk Pier 9 and was assistant editor of Artnet Magazine. She has had solo art exhibits in New York (I-20 Gallery), San Francisco, Vienna, and Mexico City; and exhibited internationally at venues such as Art Basel Miami, Shanghai Art Fair, FIAC Paris, ARCO Madrid, and Art Cologne. She lives and works in San Francisco where she is a member of the art and DJ collective Brass Tax.