Briana Miyoko

AOTEAROA | “The Long White Cloud”

Arches watercolor paper, gesso, ink, charcoal, oil, pouring medium, cheesecloth, acrylic, gouache, embroidery thread, tea, & steel

2019

Through the slippage of mythology, uncertain histories, and diverse geography, Aotearoa emerges and lives as homage to the birthing of New Zealand and its contemporaneously decreasing isolation. Aotearoa, “the long white cloud,” slips up and down, influenced by the diverse terrain it travels over - billowing up over the humid temperate rainforest, and thinning out over the dry Canterbury region.

Aotearoa is the call and response of the land and air. The long white cloud mirrors the land, weaving the air and the land as one. Its contours shift and change in response to the indigenous terrain. It’s the receiver, reflector, and protector; the overseer of the land.

According to legend, a man named Kupe first discovered what we now know as New Zealand. Aortearoa, the cloud, welcomed Kupe, his wife, and crew to the land pulled out of the sea by the Polynesian deity, Maui. Kupe and the original voyagers used the long white cloud to guide them by day and the long bright cloud at night.

To this day, it is unknown where the Moari people came from. As legend tells it, they were a seafaring people, assumed to be from a mythical land called Hawaiki. The first wave of Moari migration began around 1300ce. In 1642, European contact was made by Abel Tasman off the coast of New Zealand, and in 1840, the British assumed formal control of New Zealand. Today, being Moari means recognizing and venerating their ancestors, having claims to family land, and having a right to be received as taangata whenua (“people of the land”).

Through the use of gestural marks, slowly dried ink pools, sweeps of light, and saturated color, I strive to invigorate the intense yet tranquil energy evoked by Aotearoa. While I do not consider this an accurate representation of the long white cloud, I do see it as an extension and intuitive interpretation of a complex and mystifying place that I too once called home.

burnt, contorted, scraped | Suspended Landscape

Arches watercolor paper, ink, charcoal, Montecito Debris Flow dirt, steel, gouache, acrylic, chalk, graphite, embroidery thread, & oil

2019

On January 9, 2018, fifteen minutes of heavy rain swept monumental boulders through the scorched land, carving through the previously “picturesque” Santa Barbara, California. This has become the subject of my drawing installations. I am interested in how the disruption of the chaparral in the Santa Ynez Mountain Range and a reorganization of the land, vegetation, and natural environment mirror the creative process.

It is in the landing of boulders and displaced peoples that I see connections between my process and shifts in society. I am concerned with gravity, rupture, and negotiation of ecosystems. It is on the cusp of tethered tension, an ashen surface, or melted wax that I see a conversation with the washed away, burned down, and rebuilding of surface, structure, and system.

I utilize a diverse array of media including photography, film, and drawn documentation to capture landscape, community, and the impression of time. I manipulate these materials by way of color alteration, build up of surface texture, movement, and physical arrangement with site-specific material to create installations choreographed by light.

These installations serve as a tool for grappling with the rebuilding of infrastructure, as I question how the media and affluent demographics influence natural disaster relief policy.