Artists Collaborating with Insects: From Duprat to Yanagi

A growing number of contemporary artists are ceding creative control to insects, challenging traditional notions of authorship and artistic intent. Hubert Duprat (France, 1957) provides caddisfly larvae with gold, pearls, and gemstones, which the insects incorporate into their protective cases, creating hybrid natural-artifactual objects. Jan Fabre (Belgium, 1958) coats human busts and skulls with thousands of real beetle shells, evoking both beauty and disgust. Damien Hirst uses dead butterflies and flies in his Butterfly Paintings, arranging them into kaleidoscopic compositions on painted canvases. Tomáš Libertíny (Slovakia, 1979) allows bees to build sculptures entirely from wax and honey within provided frameworks, embracing non-human logic. Yukinori Yanagi (Japan, 1959) uses live ants in site-specific installations like The World Flag Ant Farm (1990), where ants dig tunnels through sand and glass connecting national flags, and Icarus (2025) at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, reflecting on fragility and biological memory. These practices raise questions about authorship, intentionality, and the boundary between art and nature, especially amid biodiversity loss.