ARTLAB | Miya Ando: Sky Writing
February 12, 2024 – June 1, 2024
Lowe Art Museum
1301 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables, FL 33146
305-284-3535
Presence and absence. Forgotten words and histories, persistent myths and legends. The language of life, the poetry of nature, and the cyclical rhythms of existence. The spaces in between. These are the subjects to which visual artist Miya Ando devotes her multifaceted practice. Raised between a Buddhist temple in the seaside town of Okayama (Southwest Japan) and Northern California’s Redwood Forest, Ando now lives and works in New York City, where she brings age-old materials--such as glass, washi paper, wood, and indigo—into meaningful dialogue with modern media, including steel and aluminum. The resulting works are both shockingly relevant and hauntingly enduring, encouraging us to think about the precarity of the world we inhabit while simultaneously reflecting on the long arc of time. Miya Ando: Sky Writing is paradigmatic in this regard. Created from resin, ink, dye, and silver on composite aluminum, the works in this exhibition are part of the artist’s Cloud series: visual meditations on the ephemerality of both atmospheric conditions and human existence. These works optically shift and change in the light, enhancing not just their materiality and physical beauty, but also their capacity to transport viewers to ethereal realms.
Miya Ando: Sky Writing is part of ArtLab @ the Lowe and has been curated by participating undergraduate students at the University of Miami. Uniting practice and theory, ArtLab enables the next generation of museum professionals to “learn by doing.” The program equally supports cultural exchange and global cooperation through an immersive, travel initiative, including a student trip to Tokyo (generously supported by Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their Kakehashi Program) in March 2024.
