Exhibition · Art to Disarm · 2025
The Colony
Marching for Money, Blind to Destruction: a living installation of leaf-cutting ants and a dollar-covered AK-47.
HOFA Gallery, Bruton Street, Mayfair, London · February 2025
In February 2025, Art to Disarm presented The Colony: Marching for Money, Blind to Destruction at HOFA Gallery on Bruton Street, Mayfair: a living installation and Bran’s most ambitious work to date.
A working colony of leaf-cutting ants travelled through clear tubing from their nest to a decommissioned AK-47 collaged in real US dollar bills, carrying fragments of currency across the weapon. The surface also featured cryptocurrency symbols, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
A mirror of society
Bran drew a parallel between the ants’ organised labour and modern human life: people travelling to work, earning, spending and feeding an economic system, often without seeing what it costs. Set on a weapon, that labour became a picture of how the pursuit of wealth connects to conflict and environmental destruction.
The installation asked a simple question: are we, like the ants, so focused on gathering wealth that we fail to see the damage around us?
In the press
The Colony · HOFA Gallery, London · 2025