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Yukinori Yanagi (born 2 May, 1959) is a Japanese contemporary artist.

From 1986, Yanagi began to exhibit artwork such as those using ants and soil balls that represent dung beetle rolled balls, addressing the issues of “movement” from the perspective of an outsider of the art world’s system. Yanagi had an opportunity to exhibit works at the Hillside Gallery in Daikanyama, where he showed various pieces including a smoke performance piece I Feel Yellow. Yanagi was awarded the Excellence Award in Art Document from the Tochigi Prefectural Art Museum of Fine Arts in 1987.

Yanagi moved to America after he received a scholarship from the Sculpture Department of the Graduate School of Yale University School of Art and Architecture in 1988, where he studied under Vito Acconci, Frank Gehry, among others.

The World Flag Ant Farm was awarded the Aperto Award at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. He created an art project on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay’s former prison island, in 1996.

In 1992, he was invited to open a solo exhibition at the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (now Benesse House at Benesse Art Site Naoshima), which had only newly opened in 1992. His stay on Naoshima inspired an idea for a new work on an island in the Seto Inland Sea.

In 1995, Yanagi’s vision for the revitalization of the whole island of Inujima by turning the copper refinery ruins into art and using renewable energy, was realized with the support from Benesse Corporation’s CEO at the time, Soichiro Fukutake. In 2008, Inujima Art Project’s “Seirensho”, which combines features of the house of Yukio Mishima and Heritage Industrial Modernization, opened and is now known as Inujima Seirensho Art Museum.

In 2000, Yanagi became the first foreign artist living in New York to be invited to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial, alongside Cai Guo-Qiang. Yanagi presented his “Study For American Art” series, which included his Three Flags, Jasper Jones inspired piece.

The Inujima Art House Project during the 1st Art Setouchi in 2010, featured three installations in the Inujima village, by Yanagi in collaboration with architect Kazuyo Sejima. After the completion of the Inujima Project, he took on the challenge of transforming an old junior high school on the remote island of Momoshima Island, Onomichi City, Hiroshima prefecture, to make ART BASE MOMOSHIMA, and work in the Onomichi Channel area.

In 2016, Yanagi’s large-scale solo exhibition at Yokohama’s BankART1929 explored the 30 years of his artwork and took up the whole museum. He unveiled Project God-zilla, a work about the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.