Curriculum Vitae :Download
Miya Ando’s art practice investigates the intersection of material abstraction, natural phenomena, and the aesthetics of impermanence. Perception, duration, and atmospheric conditions are enacted through metal, pigment, washi, and light—materials selected for their responsiveness to subtle environmental change. Through painting, drawing, and installation, she constructs visual and temporal conditions that recalibrate attention. Language functions structurally in the work, with titles drawn from untranslatable Japanese idioms that reflect her hybrid cultural perspective and engagement with non-Western epistemologies. Ando’s practice is informed by her upbringing in a Buddhist temple in Japan and her training in traditional metalworking—both of which contribute to her engagement with impermanence, ritual, and material transformation.
Ando’s work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Daitoku-ji Temple in Kyoto, and the Jean Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai. She has held solo exhibitions at the Noguchi Museum, Asia Society Texas, the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, the Nassau County Museum of Art, the American University Museum, and participated in group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. She exhibited in the 56th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. In 2011, Ando created a monumental September 11 memorial sculpture for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, commissioned from World Trade Center steel. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the 2023 Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission Award, and has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (magna cum laude), further studies at Yale University and Stanford University, and apprenticeship under a master metalsmith in Japan, she is also a sixteenth-generation descendant of Bizen swordsmiths. Notable commissions include a 2013 collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, a project for the Philip Johnson Glass House, and a collaboration with Saint Laurent. In 2025, Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words was published by The MIT Press.