Yukinori Yanagi

Yukinori Yanagi’s monumental EURO piece of 2001-2002 consists of twelve units, representing the currencies of those countries that joined the European Union in its inaugural year. The arrangements of colored sand encased in plexi-boxes symbolize the twelve highest value bank notes of the European nations. They were first connected by plastic tubes allowing ants to move from one to another. As the ants burrowed and dug holes through the ‘bank notes’ and carried out with them the sand, the colors (as the country symbols) intermixed and the notes gradually dissolved into one fluid universal bank note. Thus Yanagi suggests in the ant’s very passage a union between the countries, pondering the potential posed by unrestricted national borders, which can lead to a positive vision of transnational world.