"Mark"

Imprints is a public art installation created for the first public art festival at the Qimiao Town development of Overseas Chinese Town in Xiangyang, Hubei. The original intention was to implant a country muddy road cast in Corten steel into a fashionable commercial street, using the strong contrast between work and environment to create wonder and trigger reflection on the rural landscapes that once lay beneath the site. On first visiting Qimiao Town, the artist expected a whimsical place, but found that it was merely a real-estate concept built on former farmland, where the so-called wonder was simply an aspiration for future prosperity. Because the surrounding space was still under construction, the usual bases for public art rooted in site history, dialogue with environment, or interaction with the public were absent, and the creative process stalled. The breakthrough came from a clump of mud on the concrete road, bearing a clear tire mark left by an engineering vehicle, like a relief on the pavement, which triggered memories of childhood country roads. Those roads had rich expressions that changed with the weather: muddy after rain, full of wheel and footprints when dry, and returning to dust after long dry spells. With modernization, such scenes have all but disappeared, yet the rural dirt road was our road of origin, carrying our memories. Imprints attempts to cast and preserve the ruts and footprints of rural roads, restoring them in fragments within the bustling commercial district. The original plan to mold an actual muddy road proved unworkable because road conditions were unstable, roads in use could not be closed, and ideal expressive stretches were hard to find. The work was therefore made indoors: sculpting clay was spread on the floor, vehicles drove over it and people walked on it to simulate tracks, and the impressions were then cast in Corten steel. The finished pieces were laid in a small plaza off the main pedestrian route. Their rough texture clashes deliberately with the fashionable surroundings, and this very dissonance responds to the wonder that Qimiao Town seeks to evoke.