The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

Yukinori YANAGI I ASolitary Voice from the Wilderness Lives and works in Kamifukuoka, Saitama, Japan Top Asia-Pacific ant farm 1994 Installation at Art Tower Milo comprising ants, coloured sand, plastic box, plastic tube, plastic pipe and video documentation on LCD monitor Yukinori Yanagi is a fighting artist engaged in a heroic struggle that might be described as classical. He analyses and clarifies systems of society, government, common sense, law, economics, and morality with methods which are almost crude in their directness, and dangerously close to the edge. He criticises these systems for their concealment of truth and inhumanity. Yanagi is not, however, a tough, macho sort of artist. He is a sensitive, cautious and lonely young man. He fights because he cannot help it, because it is the only way he can live. 76 I ARTISTS : EAST ASIA Collection: Takamatsu City Museum of Art Bottom Asia-Pacific ant farm 1994 (detail with Japanese flag) When Yanagi made an installation with mirrors in the corner of a gallery using Ultraman figures (Ultraman is a character like Spiderman from a Japanese television series), reminiscent of a piece by Michael Heizer, he was cynically criticising the emptiness and dishonesty in the economic and cultural confusion of modern Japan. In 1994 the artist scattered the words for love and hate from many different Asian languages on a beautiful red carpet with the chrysanthemum crest of the Japanese passport, which closely resembles that of the imperial family, in the centre.This piece indicated a serious anti-war stance. The words 'freedom of speech', guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution, were woven into the reverse side of the carpet for presentation in case of an attack by ultra-rightists. Was this overly cautious? Sufficient caution is needed to successfully carry out a strategy of this kind over the long run. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has been debated endlessly since the new constitution was established in Japan by the United States at the end of World War II. Article 9 states Japan's basic ideal: to remain peaceful and never maintain a military force. The current reality, however, which makes Japan the target of frequent criticism, is that we are maintaining a large military force in Asia which is said to exist only for defence, hence it is called the Self-Defence Force. Yanagi is questioning the rhetorical hypocrisy of hiding this presence behind the word 'defence' and it is this point that he criticises. It is not my purpose here to say whether this is right or wrong, but the split neon text of Article 9 which Yanagi showed in Hiroshima in 1994 was the result of deep concern over this problem. Yanagi's first Ant farm was shown in 1990.This work presents an aspect of the present condition of the world in a very clear way. The flags of the various countries are constructed of coloured sand placed within plastic cases. These are connected by plastic tubes and ants are released into them. As the ants make their tunnels through the flags, they move sand from one box to another. After a while, the ants break down the flag designs and mix up the sand.This dissolution of the flags alludes to world conditions in this century when more people than ever before travel, emigrate, or are driven by force from one country to another. The ants symbolise the many people who have lost their social and cultural roots: drifters, refugees and cultural nomads. The disintegrating flags refer to the gradual loss of national identity and cultural autonomy which is occurring under post-modern conditions. The flags shown in the first Ant farm were those of the 170 countries recognised by the United Nations. The new work made for the present exhibition shows the flags of the Asia-Pacific region. In a sense, it is a site-specific work made to fit the venue in Australia. Even in such a simple work, it is impossible to avoid problems like those between Taiwan and China. Naturally, Yanagi does not pretend to offer solutions to these problems. All he can do as an artist (and this is his duty as an artist) is to offer his objective views of our social and political ideas, throw them into sharper perspective, and make us think more carefully about where we have come from and where we are going. Yanagi is quite unusual among Japanese artists in his political concerns and his criticism of society. This stance is essential, however, to what it means to be an artist and, in his instinctive awareness of this, Yanagi can be said to be an artist in the most fundamental sense. FurniaNanjo, Independent Curator,Tokyo,Japan