The Ant and The Grasshopper
2022 | 3D printed grasshopper head, found clothing, found pickaxe, silicone skin, concrete, wires, gold bar, quarry stone, diamond, petroleum, trading card(lumber, coal, marble) | life-size of an adult
This piece attempts to define the word
“play” and confront the accompanying anxiety concerning the ideal of existence
for society and individuals. The installation depicts a resident of an imagined
utopia; a utopia theorized by Bernard Suits in 1978, in which all needs for
instrumental and productivity are satisfied, and the only thing left for humans
to do is to play games. When games are fabricated and made-believe as all the
activity used to be driven by economic needs and social growth, the distinction
between labor and game becomes inexplicit and even interchangeable.
The grasshopper in this project refers to
the one in the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper by Aesop, yet presents
another interpretation. Instead of being lazy and shortsighted, this
grasshopper resembles someone in disguise playing a game without knowing it,
who therefore believe game playing to be the essential life of the grasshopper.
