Tombstones – Milestones

Installation

This art work was created from the emotion I got when standing in front of the graves of anonymous prisoners in Con Dao (Poulo Condor), an isle that is called “Terrestrial Hell” of Vietnam in its war time. Lying in those graves are the people who had devoted their whole lives to an ideal. Passing away, they carried their ideal into the graves; their idealistic aspiration seems to be the blood current that is flowing from their bodies to impregnate the soil, creating the basis of a new life.

The tombstones with white trunk and red top standing in abundance on the wild hill made me think of milestones. Each one is a landmark of a length of distance we covered. The death of each person is just a landmark in the unfinished itinerary of life.

Tombstones in Con Dao exist among millions of landmarks in the itinerary of history and culture transfer that cost the lives of millions of anonymous.