Born and raised in Hawai‘i, Melissa Chimera is a conservationist whose work consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. She has exhibited throughout the U.S., Asia and the Middle East with solo and curatorial projects, and her work is included in the collections of Honolulu Museum of Art and Arab American National Museum. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award, finalist for the Duke University Lange-Taylor Prize, and was Anchorage Museum’s 2022 artist-in-residence and University of Toledo’s Mikhail Endowment grantee for her work concerning immigrant narratives.