A(U)NTS!

Does a worker ant or a soldier ant wish she had children? If she doesn’t have children, is she obeying the imperatives of her biology and society, or defying them? What is biology and what is choice? What does it feel like to live one’s life in service of someone who does have children? Can we even ask about the wants and desires of a single ant, or is it more relevant to ask what it feels like to be an ant colony, with its powerful survival instincts and layers of sterile female castes? A(U)NTS! is a project that looks at these largely childless, largely female, rigorously organized societies of tiny insects and explores their intersection with and potential as a model for human women: for how we think about our roles in our families, our relationship to our gender, our relationship to the duties associated with our gender, and even our conception of our own bodies and brains.