Transitory Elements

"Transitory Elements” will be featured at the Japanese Friendship Garden's Exhibit Hall from September 1 to November 30.

The exhibit, "Transitory Elements," by artist Miya Hannan contains paintings, sculptures, and an installation that address her views of life and death. Her work is influenced by archaeology, cosmology, funeral rituals, and her experiences of working in the medical field in Japan, a Buddhist country.

She will bring to us an unprecedented display of installation art covering all the spaces of the Exhibit Hall. She is a medical professional turned artist; her artwork connects molecules of all sentient beings.

Her theme, “One cannot exist without the chains of birth and rebirth,” will bring us a series of different forms of one’s past connecting with the present. As a young child, her passion was the study of anatomy. She states that she could spend hours by herself looking at anatomy books. Her installation includes many skeletal figures in the Exhibit Hall, representing the end of one cycle to take another new form.

Her artwork stems out from her upbringing in Japan: a Buddhist view of all beings, whether visible or invisible, embodies spirit and that spirit is manifesting Buddha’s nature. Through her work we learn that life in humans, plants, trees, and flowers,--all in the nature is constantly repeating the rebirth of cycle.