Rhode Island Artists: A Nest

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Part 1, Part 2

Over seven hundred years ago, Polynesian settlers sailed their canoes to the uninhabited beaches of New Zealand. There, they cherished a distinct culture that originated from their Polynesian ancestry and supported the population in its new home. 

These were the Māori people. They observed and preserved the world around them through various kinds of storytelling, including poetry, song, woodcarving, weaving, and even tattooing. Through these artforms, they communicated their spirituality and whakapapa: their genealogy, specifically in the way that it connected them to their community. But when British colonists arrived in the 1700s, the Māori rallied to protect their culture, society, and home until the successful Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

Three hundred years later, Ohanga, meaning nest in Māori, is inspired by the spirit of this endeavor. We, too, want to build a cradle for self-expression that supports its members—who we call creatives—in the face of a desynthesized audience constantly scrolling through an online world. 

As if creating unique, striking content wasn’t enough, artists are expected to advance in their crafts while also handling the endless details necessary to a successful business, like building an online presence, creating a brand, establishing a loyal audience, and managing customer relations. As for the art consumers, there is no universal body that facilitates transactions, nurtures connections, and fosters admirer’s own artistic impulses within a local art community. 

Our co-founders, Subham Sett and Yuping Wang, felt called to repurpose their decades of technology experience and solve a fundamentally artistic problem: to rewrite the narrative of the struggling artist. To help them support themselves in ways that have previously been too expensive, and too time consuming to be sustainable. 

Stephen Hawking once said, “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.” Hundreds of thousands of talented creatives are captured by the glow of the universe—only to be forced to look away, towards the better-paying and more respected opportunities presented on their paths. Subham Sett knew from an early age that he would have greater success prioritizing a practical career in STEM instead of pursuing his love for photography, and as an engineer-by-day and art-enthusiast-by-night, Yuping Wang struggled to discover and support her local art community along with manifesting her own artistic inspirations.

The first step to breaking free from this mold was to put together the Ohanga team: a growing community of engineers, computer scientists, designers, technologists, and writers who are all, ultimately, artists at heart, and desire to amplify the smothered voices of those that often fall between the cracks. 

Thanks to Subham, Yuping, and the Ohanga team, we can imagine a stable and sustainable approach to celebrate creative, starting with Rhode Island artists. An artistic ecosystem that allows creatives to focus on their creations instead of looking for side jobs, where online communications become offline connections between local artists and patrons. Just like the Māori celebrated their whakapapa, we believe that creatives can flourish through the support of their community—who we call admirers—the successful monetization of their artistic pursuits, and a little help with the business side of things.

That is why we’ve created Ohanga as a platform to bring together creatives and admirers in a hyperlocal, immersive online setting. Ohanga, though, is not just a market: it is also a place to tell and hear stories, strengthen our local roots to Rhode Island, and re-establish the sense of trust in our community that has faded since the time of the Māori.