Miya Ando is a New York-based artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, and artist books. Her work constructs visual systems that translate temporal natural phenomena into material form, often marking impermanence through elemental processes. She engages materials such as indigo, silver, anodized aluminum, and washi, each chosen for its capacity to register durational change. Her multi-medium practice is grounded in the belief that each concept is best conveyed through the material that most viscerally reiterates its idea. Drawing from both Japanese and American lineages, as well as early years spent in a Buddhist temple in Japan and an apprenticeship with a master metalsmith in Okayama, she translates natural and linguistic ephemera into form. Titles often draw from untranslatable Japanese idioms tied to seasonal and ecological transitions, positioning language as a structural element within the work.

Ando’s solo exhibitions include the Noguchi Museum in New York, Asia Society Texas Center in Houston, SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Nassau County Museum of Art in New York, and the American University Museum in Washington DC. Group exhibitions include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick Gallery), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the 56th Venice Biennale at Palazzo Grimani in Venice. Her work is held in major public collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Corning Museum of Glass, Crystal Bridges, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Jean Paul Najar Foundation. Her public commissions include a thirty-foot September 11 memorial sculpture at the Zaha Hadid Aquatic Centre in London and the Flower Atlas Calendar installation at Brookfield Place in New York. She has received awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, the Emerging Artist Prize from the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship. In 2025 the MIT Press published her book Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of Two Thousand Japanese Rain Words. She is a sixteenth generation descendant of Bizen swordsmiths.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

A concept that has shaped how I think about my work is 森羅万象 (shinrabanshō), the Japanese term describing the totality of phenomena in the natural world as one continuous field. Within this framework, nature becomes a philosophical lens through which I think about impermanence and the passage of time.

I grew up between Northern California and Japan and spent part of my childhood in a Buddhist temple, where ideas of cyclical time and transience were part of daily life. These experiences shaped how I think about perception and the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Material knowledge also influenced my practice. I apprenticed with a master metalsmith in Okayama, Japan, and I come from a lineage of Bizen swordsmiths.Today I work across painting, sculpture, installation, and artist books, examining phenomena such as clouds, rainfall, and moon phases.

Ideas of transience and the poignancy of passing moments seem relevant to your work. In what ways do you explore these sensibilities in your practice?

My work begins with natural phenomena in transition such as weather, seasonal shifts, and lunar cycles. These conditions offer a way of thinking about impermanence.

The Japanese concept 物の哀れ (mono no aware) describes an attunement to transience and the emotional resonance of passing moments. Rather than depicting a single instant, I focus on making work that reflects gradual transformation and the accumulation of subtle shifts over time.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

Long periods of observation form the foundation of my process. I spend extended periods studying atmospheric conditions and seasonal transitions before translating those observations into visual form.

Material selection follows the idea behind each project. Indigo, silver, aluminum, and washi respond differently to light and atmosphere, allowing subtle changes over time to become visible.

The studio process is based on precision and involves experimenting and repetition.

You explore time as something experienced rather than depicted. How do you approach capturing its subtle passage in your work?

Time is a central concept in my work. I use color as a way of encoding time. In natural indigo dyeing, the longer the material remains in the vat, the deeper the blue becomes. The color reflects duration.I am also drawn to dusk and dawn, the two moments of the day when color shifts moment by moment as light fades or emerges. Metal surfaces register time differently, reflecting changes in light and atmosphere so the work shifts with its surroundings. In these situations, color and light record the passage of time.

How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

My work emerges from a hybrid perspective shaped by both Japanese and American cultural contexts. That position has often meant existing slightly outside either tradition, which influences how I think about nature, impermanence, and the passage of time. Japanese is my first language and plays an important role in the work, and many titles draw from untranslatable idioms tied to seasonal and atmospheric change.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

My book Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of Two Thousand Japanese Rain Words, published by MIT Press in November 2025, will appear in a second printing in April 2026. The project gathers two thousand Japanese words describing different forms and expressions of rain, each paired with a drawing.

Together these drawings form an archive translating linguistic descriptions of weather into visual form. I am currently working on how this body of work might eventually take shape as a large-scale installation bringing the archive together within a museum context.

I also recently exhibited a series based on the traditional Japanese calendar of seventy-two microseasons (shichijūni kō) in Tokyo in January 2026, and I am continuing this body of work with presentations in London and New York later this year.

Text & photo courtesy of Miya Ando

Website: www.miyaando.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiomiyaando/