Human/Non-human. Male/Female. Coloniser/Colonised. Sweetness/Submission
Under/Mine is a sculptural ant farm built from clear acrylic and filled with decorative sugar gel. Moulded with domestic baroque patterns designed to choreograph native Australian sugar ants into a controlled living print, the structure is ornamental, seductive, and loaded. It promises symmetry but demands obedience.
The ants were meant to tunnel through the stencilled patterns, carving paths through a system that was never theirs. I designed the stage. I cast the bait. I built the trap. The ants played their part, until they didn’t. They circled back. They defied the pattern. Resistance not as overt refusal, but as deviance, drift, and eventual collapse.
Under/Mine materialises the deep logic of Western containment: the desire to aestheticise, house, and assimilate the other, be it insect, woman, or land. It tests the limits of collaboration under constraint. What happens when agency writhes inside control? When something is alive, but not free?
The work does not offer clean answers. It presses against the edge of what can be known, marked, or mastered. Ornate. Sealed. Still holding its breath.
The ants died inside the decorative structure.
What grew from their bodies was not part of the plan.
What followed became another work entirely.
What grew from their bodies was not part of the plan.
What followed became another work entirely.
