Two artists, two ecologies, and a shared empathy towards non-human animals’ agencies: Yanagi Yukinori and Liang Shaoji

A way to reflect about political ecology in East Asia is to explore the vibrant ecologies that have been created and recreated by two contemporary artists who have worked with non-human animals and called them collaborators: Liang Shaoji (Shanghai, 1945) and Yukinori Yanagi (Fukuoka, 1959). Liang, who has devoted his life to silkworms and Yanagi, who has worked extensively with ants, have both addressed the connections between the tiny (those small insects) and the huge (the entire planet) and thus stressed the relevance of all animal agencies, human or non-human. According to the approach of this special issue, to analyse their works I will rely on animal studies, which offer significant contributions to the study of contemporary art. In this light, I read their artistic proposals as an attempt to raise empathy and to advocate that every being, big or small, deserves the same consideration and is linked to any other; being this a continuum that does not have to be disrupted by barriers, dichotomies, pigeonholes and hierarchies.