Mauka to Makai explores the intersections of landscape, identity, and belonging by tracing the quiet overlaps between lived space, memory, and shifting terrain. The title references Hawaiian directional terms—mauka (toward the mountains) and makai (toward the ocean), a local way to navigate within the islands.
Yamazaki merges domestic interiors and natural landscapes into layered compositions. Rock formations, ridgelines, and hallways become portals—visual metaphors for in-betweenness, where personal and collective histories coexist. Figures, often based on family or close friends, appear in still, tender moments.
Veil-like glazes and translucent layers echo memory itself: fractured, mutable, and incomplete. Layers obscure and reveal in equal measure, inviting the viewer to engage with what is both shown and withheld. Layers obscure and reveal in equal measure, examining when is both shown and withheld.
Rooted in the ecological and cultural context of Hawai‘i and shaped by the artist’s migration to the continental US, Mauka to Makai becomes a meditation on how home is constructed. Mauka to Makai examines what it means to move between worlds while seeking connection and continuity, across generations, across oceans, and across shifting understandings of home.
