Toka Valu in the Artist Studio

About the Artist

Toka Valu is an Indigenous Pacific Islander artist and illustrator with more than five years of public arts experience, and more than twenty years of illustration and visual arts work. His artistic influences are culturally rooted and informed by his cultural upbringing in Tonga and cultivated by the Duwamish lands that he now calls home in the Pacific Northwest.

Toka’s practice integrates both his Tongan cultural upbringing and his transformative experience in the Pacific Northwest to establish a unique and bold artistry. As a multifaceted creative, his work illuminates the unseen connections in our relationships and the resulting dynamics of these ties. Using a variety of applications, Toka’s work is contemporary in its interpretation and grounded in traditional Pasifika and Tongan aesthetic.