Yana Nafysa Dombrowsky-M’Baye is an artist and educator from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand). Yana’s matrilineal ancestry harkens to Sénégal and France, and her patrilineal lineage is of Polish/Czechoslovakian descent. Across film, site-responsive installation, and sculpture, Yana’s practice is a poetic inquiry into material and immaterial temporalities across human and more-than-human scales.
Through iterative and ritualistic processes, Yana speculates upon art practice as a form of archaeology. In questioning the mnemonic and piecing together fragments of genealogical and geographical stories, materials are considered collaborators in a practice that explores the soft and hard architectures of intercultural identity and spatial practice.
Through iterative and ritualistic processes, Yana speculates upon art practice as a form of archaeology. In questioning the mnemonic and piecing together fragments of genealogical and geographical stories, materials are considered collaborators in a practice that explores the soft and hard architectures of intercultural identity and spatial practice.