As long as there have been major civilizations, there has been city planning. Above all else, urban planning strives for public welfare through the imposition of order over chaos. City order revolves around networks: streets, public transport, and drainage systems. The Greeks utilized the grid system. Romans followed orthogonal plans spreading outward from city centers. Indus Valley cities created drainage systems. Grid systems are at odds with organicism, and modes of connectivity exacerbate social stratification. City planning reflects the values of the planners. But what if everyone were a planner? Public welfare would not be forced but rather instinctual.
In a display of experimental urban planning, German and Jamaican artist Nico Tepreff unveils a city to accommodate hundreds of millions…Ants that is. Made in collaboration with several entomologists and many more leafcutter ants, Leaf Cutters is a sharp commentary on urban planning and physical connectivity in the digital age through a feminist lens. The colony, once inhabited and constructed primarily by adult female leafcutter ants, features winding passageways, multi-level chambers, gardens, and ventilation systems. Communicating almost exclusively through pheromones and vibrations during construction, the result is a network more complex than any human city.
Through casting and excavation techniques, Tepreff’s sculpture Leaf Cutters has gone from subterranean to above-ground on exhibit at the Sugar Mill Museum of Contemporary Art. Viewers are invited to observe the sculptural and architectural feats of the leafcutter ants as Tepreff presents a look into the future of equity in urban planning. The abstract shapes’ organic connectivity reflects the complex challenges of rapid urbanization and population growth while providing solutions through primitive, instinctual methods. In this exhibit, she encourages viewers to reject order and embrace chaos in problem-solving. This future is a collaboration with nature absent of the patriarchal structures that seek to dominate the earth and gender-minorities
Tepreff’s work is an examination into gender, class, culture, and environmentalism. Organicism and fluidity are visual motifs of her work, paralleling her ongoing explorations of complex causalities within intersectionality, identity, and social systems.
Leaf Cutters
Concrete Cast
46 meters diameter and 8 meters in height