More-Than-Human:
The Labor of Small Bodies
Yamamoto Baiisu (1783-1856), Insects and Grasses, 1847, Edo period (1615-1868). Handscroll; ink and color on silk, 21 x 241.3 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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What does labor look like among smaller bodies of life—animals, insects, and bacteria?
The Laboring Bird
"With regard to the “three hundred and sixty kinds of birdlife,” each has its own sounds and colors, its own manner of drinking and pecking. In the distance, they may be seen nesting in the wilds, sleeping on a sandbar, swimming in the water, frolicking on an open expanse of water, or bobbing on the deep. Nearby, they may be seen flitting through the house beams or celebrating the completion of a new building."
-Prefatory Explanation for Flowers and Birds in Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings (trans. Amy McNair)
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1582-1672), The Ten Bamboo Studio Painting and Calligraphy Manual ("Shizhuzhai shuhua pu") from Series I: Miscellany, 17th century. Woodblock print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University.
This print illustrates a bird as a body at work. Caught mid-peck or mid-swallow, the bird is engaged in the everyday labor of life, echoing the Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings, which describes birds as tireless actors: flitting, bobbing, feeding, drinking, and nesting.
One can also conceptualize this work as a product of labor. Through the carving of woodblocks and the act of printing, the artist rendered the bird’s action reproducible. The print is, therefore, both a record of natural life and of human labor: the hands that carved, pressed, and inked. In this conjoining of animal and artistic labor, the print invites viewers to consider bodies not as isolated but as shared in the making of the work itself.
The Silk Worker
"Silkworms diligently and slowly went to work, ignoring the world outside."
-Xu Bing (b. 1955)
Xu Bing (b. 1955), Silkworm Book: The Analects of Confucius, 2019. Book and silkworm, 1.5 x 52 x 42 cm. Asia Society Triennial, New York.
The Silkworm Book evokes reflection on the co-existence of human and non-human labor, cultural production, and its transformation. Silkworms were placed directly onto the surface of the ancient Chinese philosophical text, The Analects of Confucius. As the silkworms moved across the pages, they began to gradually veil the human-created text with their biological production of white silk threads and droppings.
Silkworms have been involved in Chinese material culture and economy for over 2000 years. The slow, natural labor of an insect juxtaposed against the intellectual labor of Confucius implores the viewer to consider the relationship between text and textile, human and animal production, and between cultural meaning and biological materiality. The progressive covering of the text allows us to understand how non-human biological processes can transform, obscure, and ultimately create a new layer upon human knowledge production.
Colonies of Labor: Ants and Bacteria
The Hugo Boss Prize 2016: Anicka Yi, Life Is Cheap
Solo exhibition
Anicka Yi (b. 1971), Lifestyle Wars, 2017. Ants, mirrored Plexiglas, Plexiglas, two-way mirrored glass, LED lights, epoxy resin, glitter, aluminum racks with rackmount server cases and Ethernet cables, metal wire, foam, acrylic, aquarium gravel, and imitation pearls, dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Detail view of carptenter ants in Lifestyle Wars
Carpenter ant (Camponotus), Infests wooden structures to build nests.
Lifestyle Wars is a multi-sensory installation featuring a living colony of approximately 10,000 carpenter ants. Bounded within the artist's constructed environment, the ants navigate a temperature-controlled apparatus resembling a circuit board. Permeating throughout the installation is also Anicka Yi's custom-developed scent, "Immigrant Caucus," which combines the sweat and biological essence of Asian-American women with the distilled scent of ants. Grappling with both the biological and technological, Yi explores how the ant and human organize their labor and communication within connected networks dictated by the society and the environment.
Carpenter ants are often considered invasive pests by humans and hidden away in the crevices of the ground or in the unnoticed structures of daily life. However, in Lifestyle Wars, they emerge as performers of labor that demand our attention. As the ants navigate through the circuit board, they use their own forms of communication—pheromones, sound, and touch—which encompass methods of work and labor that are not all too unfamiliar to the human. In parallel, the sweat of Asian American women stands as a marker of labor often rendered invisible in a society that fails to fully acknowledge it. Thus, in the circuit of living ants and the fumes of sweat from Asian-American women, Yi raises the question of whose labor is seen, whose is ignored, and how communication—human or otherwise—reflects the living networks around us.
Essentially, Lifestyle Wars generates critical reflection on "how assumptions and anxieties related to gender, race, and class shape physical perception" (Guggenheim).
Anicka Yi (b. 1971), Force Majeure, 2017. Plexiglas, aluminum, agar, bacteria, refrigeration system, LED lights, glass, epoxy resin, powder coated stainless steel, light bulbs, digital clocks, silicone, and silk flowers, dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Petri dishes of bacteria used in Force Maejure
In a shallow, glass-enclosed chamber containing two chair-like structures, multi-colored speckles of pink and orange blotches of bacteria run through the walls of the exhibition space. Anicka Yi transforms 400 agar-coated tiles in Force Majeure with bacteria that has been harvested from Chinatown and Koreatown in New York City. Alongside the occasional green spots of mold, Yi renders visible the sprawling number of bacteria that surrounds our everyday lives.
Bacterial labor is inseparable from human labor. In every metabolic act of sweat and breath, human labor is infested with traces of bacterial growth. Yi therefore invites her viewers to confront their anxieties about bacteria and bodily processes, while also challenging Western society's obsession with hygiene and cleanliness. One might also consider the racialized stereotypes that have long stigmatized communities like Chinatown and Koreatown as "unhygienic."
Bibliography
Chu, Kiu-Wai. "Worms in the anthropocene: the multispecies world in Xu Bing’s Silkworm series." In Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practice of Environing at the Margins, edited by C.‑J. Chang, 143-166. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
"Life is Cheap: The Guggenheim Museum." Anicka Yi Studio. Accessed May 5, 2025. https://www.anickayistudio.biz/exhibitions/life-is-cheap
"The Hugo Boss Prize 2016: Anicka Yi, Life is Cheap." Guggenheim. Accessed May 5, 2025. https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/the-hugo-boss-prize-2016
Sutton, Benjamin. "A Display of Sweat, Ants, and Bacteria at the Guggenheim." Hyperallergic, June 27, 2017. https://hyperallergic.com/384804/a-display-of-sweat-ants-and-bacteria-at-the-guggenheim/
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