Art Walk - Foot People

Art Walk – Foot People is thirty- one carved granite stepping stones located on the banks of Thuan An Lagoon twelve kilometres from Hue in Vietnam. The work is inspired by a traditional song from Hue about exile and sacrifice. In the second Century AD a Vietnamese princess was traded for land and as a consequence was exiled to the Champa Kingdom in the south.

Patterns and the words are carved into thirty-one granite stepping stones.

nuoc non ngan dam ra di

water mountain 1000 miles go out

 (My homeland was left behind to journey 1,000 miles)

The stones are placed on a strip of land known to the locals as the American Road. The America Road, four kilometres in circumference, was built during the American War to circle a radar tower. The road is now used by local fish farmers to live and travel on. Many thousands of ‘boat people’ fled Vietnam from this area. The work evokes histories of walking and journeys crossing borders by land and sea.

Art Walk – Foot People was commissioned by 5th International Sculpture Symposium in Hue, Vietnam in 2008.