Miya Ando | |
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| Born | 1973 (age 51–52) [1] |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley, Yale University |
| Awards | Venice Biennale |
| Website | www |
Miya Ando (born 1973) [2] is an American visual artist recognized for her paintings, sculptures, and installation artworks that address concepts of temporality, interdependence, and impermanence. Her artworks have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces worldwide.
In her conceptually-driven paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Ando often uses imagery evoking ephemeral natural phenomena such as clouds, the seasons, tides, rain, or moonlight, to articulate fundamental realities of existence. [3] The artist has noted, "nature is the great equaliser. We all know what rain is. We all know the feeling of experiencing vastness. I like the idea of making something that is a barometer of our physical environment." [4] She is known for using steel, or sheets of burnished and chemically treated aluminum as substrates for her distinctively experiential paintings of hypothetical horizons. [5] Ando says of her use of materials, “I have a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of metal and its ability to reflect light. Metal simultaneously conveys strength and permanence and yet in the same instant can appear delicate, fragile, luminous, soft, ethereal. The medium becomes both a contradiction and juxtaposition for expressing notions of evanescence, including ideas such as the transitory and ephemeral nature of all things, quietude and the underlying impermanence of everything.” [3]
Ando's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asia Society Texas, [6] Noguchi Museum, [7] SCAD Museum of Art, [8] Lowe Art Museum, [9] the Bolinas Museum, [10] Katzen Arts Center at the American University Museum, [11] [12] the Cornell Museum, [13] and Hammond Museum and Japanese Garden. Artworks by Ando have also been featured in group exhibitions of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [14] Detroit Institute of Arts, [15] Santa Barbara Museum of Art, [16] Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, [17] Toyama Glass Art Museum;,ref> "New Glass Now – Toyama Glass Art Museum". toyama-glass-art-museum.jp. Retrieved 2025-05-28.</ref> Haus Der Kunst, [18] Bronx Museum of Arts, Queens Museum, [19] Smithsonian American Art Museum, [20] Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, [21] Katonah Museum of Art, [22] Spartanburg Art Museum, [23] the Museum of Art and History, [24] Nassau County Museum of Art, [25] the de Saisset Museum, [26] Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, [27] Toyama Glass Art Museum, [28] Worcester Art Museum, [29] Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art Museum, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Queens Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, and Jean Paul Najar Foundation Museum.
In 2014, Ando was invited to lecture at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. [30] [31] [32]
Ando's work is held in the following permanent collections:
Moon Ensō (Engessō) commissioned by ArtSG Singapore (2025)
FLOWER ATLAS CALENDAR (365 DAYS OF FLOWERS DEPICTED IN 72 Seasons) Brookfield Place, New York, NY (2023)
Moon Meditation Hut,” Good To Know FYI, Bhumi Farms, East Hampton, NY (2020)
Aurorae," The Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, NY (2019)
Dead of Night (Moonlit Clouds Uncharted Lands and Other Sleeping Beauties), Haus Der Kunst Museum, Munich Biennial, Munich, Germany (2019)
In 2019, Miya Ando unveiled her immersive installation Dead of Night (Moonlit Clouds, Uncharted Lands and Other Sleeping Beauties) at the Haus der Kunst museum as part of the Munich Biennial's fourth edition, titled The Big Sleep. [43] This large-scale work, measuring 58 x 365 inches, was crafted from printed fabric and stainless steel, transforming the exhibition space into a contemplative environment .
Ryōanji, "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form", Curated by Bridget Bray, Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, TX (2019)
Ryōanji is a sculptural installation by Miya Ando that was part of her solo exhibition Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form, [44] curated by Bridget Bray and presented at the Asia Society Texas Center in 2019. The title of the exhibition is drawn from the Heart Sutra, a foundational text in Mahāyāna Buddhism, which teaches that all phenomena are empty of fixed essence, and that this very emptiness is inseparable from form. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” expresses the idea that material and immaterial realities are not opposites but interdependent aspects of the same truth.
Ando’s installation is a precise, small-scale replication of the Ryōanji rock garden in Kyoto, Japan. Each of the original garden’s fifteen stones is replaced by a block of charred shou sugi ban wood—a traditional Japanese method of preserving wood through controlled burning.
Waves Becoming Light, Cornell Art Museum (2019)
Waves Becoming Light (2019) was an installation by Miya Ando at the Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach, Florida, presented from April 24 to October 6 as part of the museum’s Seven Solos series. The work transformed the gallery into a meditative environment grounded in Zen thought, drawing inspiration from a quote by the 13th-century monk Eihei Dōgen:
“The moon dwelling in the quiet mind—
even the waves are breaking down and becoming light.”
The installation featured sheer silk panels suspended from the ceiling, their diaphanous surfaces responding subtly to air currents and casting shifting shadows as light passed through. Their delicate, fluid presence suggested the dissolution of waves into moonlight, evoking both stillness and impermanence.
銀河 Ginga (The Silver River in the Sky/ The Galaxy) Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2019)
"The Cathedral (The Shrine of Trees The Sisters and The Mother)," Museum Of Art And History Cedar, Lancaster, CA (2018)
The Cathedral (The Shrine of Trees, The Sisters and The Mother) [45] is an immersive installation by Miya Ando, exhibited at the Museum of Art and History (MOAH): Cedar in Lancaster, California, from June 23 to September 2, 2018. Inspired by the redwood forests where Ando grew up, the work draws from a natural formation in which a ring of younger “sister” trees grows around the roots or stump of a central “mother” tree—an arrangement often referred to as a “cathedral.” In these forest ecologies, the surrounding trees continue to nourish the decaying mother tree through a shared root system, sustaining her long after her death.
Moonlit Clouds, Special Artist Commission, PULSE Art Fair, Miami, FL (2018)
Sora Versailles, FAENA Art Festival, “This is not America," Miami, FL (2018)
Wishing Mandala, The Rubin Museum, New York, NY (2017)
Meditation Room Nippon Club Tohoku Earthquake Memorial Installation NY, NY (2016)
9/11 Memorial Sculpture, The 911 Project London, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Zaha Hadid Aquatic Centre, London, UK (2015)
Ascension Leaves, Montefiore Hospital, Bronx, NY (2015)
Emptiness The Sky (Shou Sugi Ban) Venice Biennale (2015)
Obon (Puerto Rico)”, FIST Art Foundation, Dorado, Puerto Rico (2012)
Ando has received numerous grants and awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award and Commission for the Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, CT. [46] In 2013, she was commissioned by Bang Olufsen [47] [39] to showcase her bespoke hand-dyed, anodized watercolor technique on a limited edition speaker collection. [48] In 2015, Ando's sculpture Shou Sugi Ban, was featured in Frontiers Reimagined, a group exhibition at the Palazzo Grimani di Santa Maria Formosa Museum during the 56th Venice Biennale. [49] In 2025 Miya Ando collaborated [50] with Saint Laurent [51] and held an exhibition titled: "Mono no aware" at Saint Laurent Rive Droite, Los Angeles curated by YSL creative director Anthony Vaccarello. Also in 2025, the MIT Press published Ando's book Water of the Sky, a Dictionary of 2000 Japanese Rain Words. [52]
Ando spent part of her childhood in a Buddhist temple in Japan, as well as on 25 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountains' redwood forest in rural coastal Northern California.
After graduating magna cum laude from University of California, Berkeley with a degree in East Asian studies, she attended Yale University and Stanford University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery, before apprenticing with a master metalsmith in Japan. [53]
She is a 16th-generation descendant of Bizen sword maker Ando Yoshiro Masakatsu. [53]
Ando lives in Manhattan, New York, and has a studio in Long Island City.