Nature and Impermanence
Miya Ando’s practice is rooted in the intersection of nature and impermanence. She materializes vanishing phenomena such as seasons, meteor trails, shifting light, and fragile cultural memory through metal, pigment, washi, and light. Drawing from Buddhist philosophy and ecological awareness, her work makes transient natural conditions perceptible. Fog, moon phases, rainfall, and atmospheric change are translated into form through subtle, elemental abstraction. Ando’s paintings, sculptures, and installations create visual and temporal environments that heighten perception and slow attention. In an era when ecological systems are unstable and digital technologies compress our experience of time, her work offers conditions for attunement by creating spaces where slowness, change, and disappearance are held with clarity. Materials are chosen for their ability to register temporal and environmental shifts: indigo deepens with exposure, metal oxidizes, pigment fades, and light alters surface. Language functions structurally within her work. Titles are drawn from untranslatable Japanese idioms and historical color names whose meanings mutate across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Raised between Northern California and a Buddhist temple in Japan, Ando works from a hybrid perspective, merging Eastern and Western epistemologies.