Meet the Artist
Ezgi Iraz is the founder of Studio Kōlea, a visual artist, storyteller, Sufi mother, and creative director. Her work embodies love, bridge-building, and cultural remembrance.
Based in Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, her practice explores rest as a birthright for women, within systems built on women’s selfless labor. She also examines belonging as a bridge between cultures and the quiet power of visual storytelling through painting, photography, and community-centered projects.
Her art interweaves her Turkish heritage, vibrant Ottoman Islamic motifs, rugs, and ceramics with her daily life in Hawaiʻi and her appreciation for the local muʻumuʻu community.
An award-winning creative art director, Ezgi spent years shaping visual narratives across Europe. She studied in Milan, worked in Denmark, and served as Creative Art Director at LEGO’s global headquarters in Billund before relocating to Hawaiʻi.
At LEGO, she advanced representation by creating the company’s first campaign centering children of color as protagonists, heroes, thinkers, and joyful centers of the story.
Through her art and advocacy, Ezgi shifts narratives. She honors women's complex burdens by painting quiet moments of rest to inspire collective healing.
Ezgi Iraz’s Paintings
Ezgi Iraz’s acrylic painting series centers women and the transformative act of rest. Drawing from her Islamic heritage, her experiences in Hawai’i’s mu’umu’u community, and the global movement advocating rest for women, Ezgi’s work reflects her daily life in Hawai’i.
This collection of paintings represents Ezgi’s signature practice as a Turkish woman artist-painter living and working in Hawai'i.
Rest as Resistance
In a world where women are often expected to be obedient and self-sacrificing, Ezgi’s work honors rest as resistance. Informed by the practices in Tracee Stanley’s Radiant Rest and aligning with Tricia Hersey’s global Rest as Resistance movement, her paintings celebrate stillness—especially for women whose cultures have historically overemphasized women’s domestic labor.
Challenging the Status Quo
Ezgi paints to inspire women to embrace rest. Raised in a family where women were expected to serve men, she discovered through her travels that similar expectations burden women worldwide. Regardless of system, language, or background, this mindset, shaped by patriarchy and capitalism, profoundly influenced Ezgi’s upbringing.
Ezgi’s paintings serve as reminders, offerings, and prayers. They challenge modern hustle culture and affirm that women deserve rest. Rest is a birthright and, today, an act of defiance.
Her work may appear gentle or even naive, but each brushstroke manifests peace for women. Ezgi hopes that viewers who truly engage with her paintings will reconsider ingrained societal perceptions. Here, women are depicted as subjects of admiration for their intellect and ease: reading, resting, safe, and choosing not to perform. Through this visual narrative, Ezgi directly challenges the notion of women as servants.
Why the Muʻumuʻu?
The muʻumuʻu was introduced to Hawaiʻi by missionaries in the 1800s, and its history is heavy and complicated. Ezgi painted her first woman in a muʻumuʻu back in 2021, after Marion—the owner of the Mu'umu'u Library—entered and won an art giveaway Ezgi was hosting. With Marion's enthusiastic permission, that portrait sparked a deeper journey.
Ezgi does not claim ownership of the culture or a place within it; rather, she observes it as a guest artist who deeply admires the comfort, resilience, and community she sees surrounding it today. For her, this living history is an ongoing education. She believes complex narratives require real care, and that art offers a vital space to sit with them and reflect.
Since then, she has been grateful to learn from and support the local muʻumuʻu community, contributing where she can through her services, art, and financial resources as a guest here on the islands.
Ezgi hopes you feel the aşk (the deep divine love) she has poured into her heART when you view these pieces.
The Kōlea: A Name Rooted in Migration and Return
Hawaiian: Kōlea
English: Pacific Golden Plover
Turkish: Altın yağmurcunu (Pasifik altın yağmurcunu)
Sakha Turkic: Chuuskun
Studio Kōlea is named after the kōlea bird, whose annual migration across the Pacific reflects Ezgi Iraz’s own ancestral journey, from the Altai Mountains, through Istanbul, across Europe, and finally to Hawaiʻi. The kōlea does not migrate to escape. It migrates to return.
The name honors movement, memory, and belonging across cultures, languages, and oceans.
Studio Kōlea Values
Within systems built on speed, extraction, and exhaustion, other ways of being are already alive. Studio Kōlea is grounded in rest, care, and cultural remembrance. Our work is guided by the belief that slowing down is not a failure of ambition: it is a return to balance, to breath, and to what is sacred.
We create space for rest as a form of resistance, and for creativity as an act of care. Studio Kōlea honors making that is rooted in lineage, land, and lived experience: not urgency or endless extraction.
Our Guiding Principles
- Rest over urgency.
- Care over productivity.
- Presence over performance.
- Enoughness over excess.
- Cultural memory over disposability.
- Intention over endless output.
Our Commitment to Inclusion
Studio Kōlea is a space for returning to the body, to breath, to land, and to self.We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or exclusion in any form.
We welcome all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, or age. Safety, dignity, and equity are foundational to our collective rest.
The future we tend is shaped by what we choose to protect with our time, our hands, and our aloha & aşk. May we protect what matters, and return to it with care.
Our Roots & Commitments
Deeply inspired by the vibrant history and art of Hawaiʻi's local muʻumuʻu culture, Studio Kōlea and founder Ezgi Iraz operate on the traditional lands of Native Hawaiians. We offer our deepest respect to the poʻe kānaka maoli and honor the ongoing stewardship of Hawaiʻi's diverse communities.
Giving back is foundational to our studio. As we grow, we are committed to supporting local businesses and donating art, photography, and financial resources to community initiatives.
Organizations We Actively Support & Work With:
Let's Collaborate, If you are a community-led initiative or non-profit looking to collaborate, we would be honored to connect. Let's continue to uplift the vibrant spaces that make Hawaiʻi home.
Me ke aloha pumehana, Sevgilerimle
Ezgi Iraz | Studio Kōlea