Yukinori Yanagi

Artist Yukinori Yanagi (born 1959) focuses on large-scale and site-specific installations that interrogate the politics of institutional borders and boundaries often drawing from systems of signs and symbolic imagery. Investigating the notion of “wandering as a permanent position,” Yanagi uses flags as symbols of nationalism and stability of place as a point of departure. Major works pursue the dissolution of symbolic signs of stasis into organic forms that change with time and circumstance.
Edited by postwar specialist Mika Yoshitake, this publication is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on Yanagi. Presenting eight series of works from throughout the artist’s 35-year career, this project shares newly translated Japanese texts and artist interviews alongside large-scale reproductions and original contributions by scholars Jane Farver, Reiko Tomii, Bert Winther-Tamaki and Yoshitake. This retrospective of Yanagi’s work provides a platform for English readers to engage with his politically and socially engaged practice for the first time.

Yukinori Yanagi (born 1959) is one of the most influential contemporary Japanese artists, known for his exploration of complex themes related to sovereignty, globalization and borders, which he investigates through site-specific installations on a large scale. His work also looks at Japanese history, evoking the intricate sets of symbolic images that shape the understanding of space and identity. This monograph focuses on the recurrent themes in Yanagi's work, highlighting the influences on and developments in his practice over the years. It also includes essays by an international group of scholars and critics as well as a conversation between Yanagi and the curators of the exhibition project on which the monograph is based. Along with extensive photographic documentation, the volume comprises detailed entries on each of the works, compiled by scholars and illustrated by a selection of contemporary images and pictures from the archives.