Yukinori Yanagi: ICARUS
Yukinori Yanag The World Flag Ant Farm, 1990 Ants, colored sand, plastic boxes, plastic tubes, plastic pipes, monitors 180 boxes, 24 x 30 cm (each) Installation view, Benesse House Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan, 2008 Photo YANAGI STUDIO Collection of Benesse Holdings, Inc., Okayama
ICARUS opened on March 27 and will be on view until July 27, 2025, at Pirelli HangarBicocca they are pleased to present "ICARUS", the first major anthological exhibition in Europe dedicated to the art of Yukinori Yanagi, with a wide selection of key works from the 1990s and 2000s, as well as more recent works. Visitors will experience the unpredictable trajectories created by the Japanese artist. Yanagi will recontextualize some of his most significant and monumental installations in the former industrial spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, offering insights that are more relevant than ever on issues of nationalism, governance mechanisms, and the paradoxical aspects of contemporary societies.
Yukinori Yanagi (Fukuoka, 1959) lives and works on the Japanese island of Momoshima, far from the public eye, despite being one of the most influential contemporary Japanese artists. In 1993, he was invited to his first international exhibition, the 45th Venice Biennale, where he presented hundred eighty colored sand flags that crumbled day by day due to the unremitting work of thousands of live ants. Now, after thirty-two years, Yanagi returns to Italy with a major exhibition.
Known for exploring complex issues of sovereignty, globalization, and borders through large-scale, site-specific installations, the artist often delves into Japanese history whilst confronting universal themes of nationalism, the impact of modernization and technology on society. His modus operandi evokes the intricate systems of symbolic imagery and preconceived notions of political and national oppression, challenging their immobility and dissolving them into organic forms that are inherently mutable.
Yukinori Yanagi Atomic Clouds over Ground Zero (Left) From the Ground, Hiroshima, 8:30 am, August 6, 1945 (Right) From the Sky, Hiroshima, 8:30 am, August 6, 1945 Cyanotype exposed by the sun of 8:30 am, August 6, 2024, 2024 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio
From 1988 to 1990 Yanagi studied at the Yale University where he was a student of Vito Acconci and Frank Gehry and, in this period, he was struck by conceptual art. He then left the United States in the 2000s to return to Japan where he continued developing his artistic practice whilst maintaining "wandering as a permanent position" as a recurring idea. This paradox evokes a sense of constant movement and change – often suggested in his work by the employment of organic and living materials – at the same time, this is contrasted against the permanence and stability of fixed, seemingly unchanging symbolic images.
"ICARUS" is the title of Yukinori Yanagi's exhibition, curated by Vicente Todolí and Fiammetta Griccioli, which brings together a series of site-specific, immersive works that chronicle the artist's career in the Navate and Cubo spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The title evokes the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus which serves as a cautionary message as well as an invitation to reflect upon human arrogance born from overconfidence in technology. By getting too close to the sun (which the artist understands as a metaphor for nuclear energy), Icarus becomes responsible for his own downfall. The exhibition narrative presents visitors with a constant duality, establishing a dialogue between past and present, destruction and rebirth, reality and fantasy, matter and symbolism, movement and permanence. The idea of transcending physical boundaries, represented by elements such as containers, barrels and other objects used in transportation systems, becomes a metaphor for global interconnectedness.
Yukinori Yanagi Banzai Container, 2025 (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio
Some of Yanagi's provocative multimedia works are inspired by pop icons that shaped the collective imagination and global consciousness of the 1960s. The characters of Godzilla and Ultraman, emblems that emerge from the fusion of popular culture and industry, appear in works such as Banzai Container (2025), on view in the Pirelli HangarBicocca exhibition. Yanagi remembers, “[When I was a child] I loved TV shows and movies with the special effects of the time, such as Ultra- Q, Ultraman and Godzilla. These shows dealt with issues such as nuclear radiation, environmental pollution, the right to self-defense, and discrimination, and they had a strong effect on my subconscious mind as a boy.” Another integral part of Yanagi’s work is the reference to major landmark events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima. The atomic bomb, which has left an indelible and tragic mark on the historical memory of Japan and the world, is recreated in the form of an iron replica entitled Absolute Dud (2007). In this material form, the bomb no longer has the potential to destroy, but is presented as a physical reminder of the consequences of war and the abuse of power in the name of progress.
Yukinori Yanagi Project God-Zilla Onomichi U3, 2017 Mixed media, scraps from a demolished house, mirrors, acrylic, video, sound Installation view, Nishigosho Prefectural Warehouse No.3, Hiroshima, Japan, 2017 Photo YANAGI STUDIO
The exhibition opened with the work Project God-zilla 2025 - The Revenant from “ El Mare Pacificum" (2025). The large eye of Godzilla, a monster created and empowered by nuclear energy, is projected amidst an accumulation of debris and discarded objects, pieces of steel, wood, machine parts and sandbags. Recalling the pop character from Japanese cinema, the work refers to the environmental impact caused using nuclear weapons, creating a post-apocalyptic scenario that evokes a sense of mass destruction and emphasizes the vulnerability of nature and humanity. This monumental work is in dialogue with Article 9 (1994), composed of several neon structures scattered in the exhibition space that switch on and off intermittently. Visitors are encouraged to assemble words, phrases, and fragments in Japanese, distinguished by a vivid red color, which, when correctly arranged, recreate the text of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. In this clause which aspires to international peace, the renunciation of war and the use of force as means of resolving disputes with other nations are declared absolute and perpetual.
Yukinori Yanagi Icarus Container 2025, 2025 (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio
The central space of the Navate is filled with the monumental labyrinth of Icarus Container 2025 (2025), composed of several container modules and connected to a tower positioned outside the building, allowing natural light to enter. Visitors will be able to walk through this labyrinth, where they will encounter verses from the renowned poet Yukio Mishima’s poem “Icarus” – taken from his autobiographical essay “Sun and Steel” (1968) – engraved on mirrors that create a constant play of reflections. Inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, like the title of the exhibition, the immersive experience explores the consequences of human hybris and obsession with technological progress, leaving visitors with a sense of disorientation.
Yukinori Yanagi Hinomaru Illumination 2025, 2025 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio
The exhibition tour continues with Hinomaru Illumination 2025 (2025), which reproduces the Japanese flag in a neon installation reflected in a body of water. The symbol of hinomaru, which literally means “circle of the sun”, spreads out in the liquid. In this way, the artist once again introduces a dynamic, changing component with the aim of challenging the stability of the symbol itself.
Yukinori Yanagi The World Flag Ant Farm 2025, 2025 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 ©YANAGI STUDIO Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio
Finally, the Cubo hosts the well-known work The World Flag Ant Farm 2025 (2025), which received international recognition when it was awarded the “Aperto 93” prize at the 45th Venice Biennale. The work is composed of two hundred flags representing the 193 states recognized by the United Nations and 7 non-UN members such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Palestine. The flags are made of colored sand meticulously placed in transparent Plexiglas boxes. The boxes are connected by plastic tubes, in which thousands of ants create paths by carrying grains of sand from one box to another, slowly dissolving the borders and the flags themselves as symbols of national identity. The path of the ants ironically exposes the fragility of these symbols, transforming their static forms into an enormous, active “ant farm”, as the title of the work suggests.
Portrait by Hideyo Fukuda
The artist
Yukinori Yanagi has exhibited his work at many leading institutions, including Tsunagi Museum, Kumamoto (2019); Bank-ART 1929, Tokyo (2016); Inujima Art House Project, Okayama (2010); Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, Okayama (2008); Fukuoka Art Museum (2005); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2000); University Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine (1998); Chisenhale Gallery, London, Beaver College Art Gallery, Philadelphia, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (1997); Capp Street Project, San Francisco (1996); Queens Museum of Art, New York, Kirin Plaza Osaka, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara (1995); Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Japan (1992); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions – LACE (1991). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as Setouchi Triennale, Japan (2022); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2021); 21. Biennale of Sydney (2018); Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2017); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2016); Liverpool Biennial (2012); Fukuoka Triennale, Japan, Gwangju Biennale (2002); Whitney Biennial, New York (2000); Biennale de Lyon (1997); Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1996); Nagoya International Biennial, Japan; Venice Biennale (1993).
Large-scale projects in Japan
Beginning in the 2000s, Yanagi began to distance himself from the market mechanisms that govern contemporary art, as he recalls “I became disturbed by the commercialization of contemporary art. […] I felt there was something insidious about the American economy, which was expanding rapidly while the gap between rich and poor grew wider, so I closed my studio in San Francisco and pulled out of the United States”. He then returned to Japan to devote himself to long-term, large-scalev projects on a number of islands south of the Japanese peninsula: his goal was to transform them entirely into works of art. The artist creates works that have a decisive, real impact on the society that receives them, distancing himself from the mechanisms of the art system and focusing on the needs of the context in which he works. As he explains, “the guiding concept is an encounter with the everyday lives of the island people, who live in a landscape that includes art as well as the traditional gods. The overall aim is a revitalization of the community.” The artist’s fascination with inaccessible and geographically remote areas had already led him to develop a site-specific project on Alcatraz Island, the famous U.S. prison off the coast of San Francisco, in 1996. There, Yanagi created several installations that explored the definition of boundaries and the understanding of space as a process of identity creation.
The artist has developed large-scale public art projects that aim to breathe new life into abandoned spaces. One of the most ambitious is the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum, a former copper refinery that the artist transformed into a museum powered by renewable energy in 2008. The building houses several of his permanent installations on Inujima, Okayama, an island that was otherwise destined to become a landfill of industrial waste.
In 2012, Yukinori Yanagi founded Art Base Momoshima, an art center on the small island of Momoshima in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea, where the artist currently resides. Here, he has renovated and transformed a former 1950s middle school and cinema into a contemporary art museum, exhibiting his works alongside those of other artists he admires.
Major project underway in Korea
In 2025, Yukinori Yanagi's project called the Anjwa-Do Project will be developed on the island of Anjwa, Korea. It involves the opening of a floating museum dedicated to the artist's work, designed by YANAGI + ART BASE, a collaborative team lead by Yanagi. Architecture and art come together in this project, which involves the creation of seven floating cubes of different sizes, representing both the islands of the Jeollanam-Do Province and the number of continents on Earth. The works, linked to the history of the Korean peninsula, will create a dreamlike and disorienting environment where space and time dissolve into reflections in the water.
Catalog
The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Marsilio Editori. The volume explores the recurring themes that have shaped Yukinori Yanagi's career and delves deeper into the influences and evolution of his practice throughout his career. The volume includes essays by international scholars and critics, including curator Mami Kataoka and art historian Reiko Tomii, as well as a conversation between Yanagi and Vicente Todolí and Fiammetta Griccioli, curators of the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca. The book will also contain for the first time an overview of the most ambitious architectural projects realized by the artist between 2008 until today. The works on display will also be accompanied by detailed fact sheets written by scholars and enriched with a selection of historical images.
Pirelli HangarBicocca
Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation dedicated to producing and promoting contemporary art. It was conceived and is supported by Pirelli. Established in 2004, Pirelli HangarBicocca has become a benchmark institution for the international art community, local public and region. It is a museum that is free of charge, accessible and open, and a place for experimentation, research and dissemination, where art is a point of reflection on the most topical themes of contemporary culture and society.
It caters to a broad and diverse public with a programme of major solo exhibitions by both Italian and international artists, a multi-disciplinary program of accompanying events and in-depth discussions, theoretical and informational publications, and educational courses. A team of museum facilitators is on hand at all times to help the public connect with the art. Vicente Todolí has been the foundation’s artistic director since 2012.
Situated in a former industrial building, once a locomotive manufacturing facility, Pirelli HangarBicocca occupies 15,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single-level exhibition spaces in Europe. This vast area comprises the Shed and Navate spaces, which are used for temporary exhibitions, and the permanent display of Anselm Kiefer’s The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015. This monumental installation with seven reinforced concrete towers has become one of the most iconic works in Milan. While since 2010 La Sequenza (1971-1981), a work by sculptor Fausto Melotti, has been located in the outdoor garden at the entrance of Pirelli HangarBicocca.
The building also houses a number of services for the public: a spacious entrance with reception area, facilities for educational activities, space for conferences and meetings, bookshop and bistro with a charming outdoor area.
For more information about this exhibition and others at Pirelli HangarBicocca please visit their site here. Pirelli can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Pinterest.
