“7 Degrees North: The Arts of Micronesia,” a new exhibition at the Downtown Art Center, brings to Hawaii the art of a culture that has endured several hardships while it continues to face current obstacles.

Many of the approximately 2,000 islands in the northwest Pacific are now threatened by rising sea levels, said Jerome Feldman, professor emeritus in art history at Hawaii Pacific University. The region’s past also includes centuries of colonization and occupation by European and Asian powers, and nuclear bomb testing by the U.S., he said, adding that Micronesian culture is often lumped in with Polynesian culture, even though Polynesia is further south and east.

“What you’re looking at here is survival, basically, survival of the more ancient art, but these (works) are made by contemporary people,” he said of “7 Degrees North,” which is open through July 27. Feldman, an expert on Micronesian art, was an adviser for the show.

The exhibition features paintings and sketches by contemporary artists of Micronesian ancestry living in Hawaii; photographs of the islands and its people; storyboards, which depict legends of the island culture; as well as traditional handicrafts, such as woven fans and baskets, which show the “very fine, very geometric” qualities of Micronesian art, Feldman said.

“They made these things in a very beautiful way, even functional things,” said Feldman.

The region’s maritime culture is represented artistically in the form of traditional “stick” charts — a seemingly haphazard grid of flat, narrow sticks of various lengths arranged on top of each other — which are used to teach navigation.

“It’s not a measured map in the way we generally think of it,” Feldman said. “They measure in terms of difficulty of getting there, and that would include currents and winds.”

The younger generation of Micronesian artists is reflected in works by two graphic artists who have designed T-shirts, Eric Lomongo Cano and Kalany Omengkar. Cano, who was born in Chuuk and now lives on Kauai, created a T-shirt depicting a red bird, a Micronesian myzomela, grasping a “love stick,” a carved, daggerlike stick that is part of an ancient courting ritual. In traditional times, a man would push the stick through the thatched walls of a woman’s room, and she would accept his proposal by pulling it in, Cano said.

“A lot of my friends, they say, ‘Man, that bird looks evil,’ ” he said. “But I’m like, ‘No, this bird is cool, it’s bringing love.’ ”

Omengkar, who is of Palauan and Samoan ancestry, is exhibiting several paintings and ink sketches in the show, including one that depicts a Palauan woman wearing a coconut oil-and-turmeric makeup paste, giving her skin a golden glow. The makeup is traditionally worn by Palauan women for celebrations.

“You see photos and they’re out in the sun dancing, and the sun’s overhead,” Omengkar said. “They kind of light up.”