World Ant Farm Symbolism

Rich use of symbolism is an essential component in many conceptual artworks, facilitating the audience’s connection with the artist’s intent. In some works, artist incorporate juxtaposition symbols to create visual statements about their culture in order to educate or inform their audience of their perspectives in their culture, enabling conceptual connections with and meaning made from the work. Yukinori Yanagi and Brendan Tang, artist from vastly diverse cultures, both employ the visual metaphors and physical connections between symbols to communicate their individual perspectives. World Ant Farm (1990) by Yanagi and Manga Ormolu (2016) by Tang both feature different examples of highly symbolic juxtaposition to encourage their audience to reflect on culture diversity and human behaviour.
Yukinori Yanagi’s World Ant Farm (Appendix 1) is a large-scale installation comprised of a diverse collection of flags of various countries. The artist has neatly created the flags by pouring sand into a labyrinth of plexiglass boxes connected by tubes. Yanagi adds ants within these flags to work and transport food and sand through the …show more content…
At the same time, the tube connecting from one flag to another reminds us of our world’s cultures diversifying through the connections made with globalisation. The disintegration of the flags suggest that our cultures are merging as we travel and interact much like the ants do. This large scale installation enables the audience to interact and understand that our cultures are influencing one another; it prompts them to console the benefits and problems allocated with globalisation. Beyond the visual connections evident within the work, World Ant Farm – features cultural and conceptual connections, entrenched within Yanagi’s life as a Japanese artist who migrated to and back from