Recently, a picture of a “Shoes Tree” made up of discarded shoes sparked a controversy on Korean social media. Made up of 30,000 pairs of shoes, the Shoes Tree is a huge installation art piece, 17 meters tall and 100 meters long, created by environmental artist Hwang Ji-hae. The installation was commissioned to promote the concept of urban regeneration following the completion of Seoullo 7017, a project that turned the run-down Seoul Station Overpass into a park in the middle of the city. The Shoes Tree is an upcycled art piece adding new value to thrown out shoes.
There has been a heated debate among Korean netizens regarding whether this work was art or an eyesore, to the point that related keywords for “Seoullo 7017” contained “shoes namu (Korean word for tree)”, “Seoul Station shoes”, and “shoes tree”. All this brouhaha aroused my curiosity, so I went to see the Shoes Tree for myself.
Pictures of works like the Shoes Tree usually differ from the real thing. I did my best to capture the feeling with mine. The deluge of shoes was stunning. It didn’t smell like I’d worried it might. I was a bit concerned about what might happen if it rained during the exhibition. And that day, there was a reporter who was asking foreign tourists what they thought: “Isn’t it weird? Strange?”
The operating costs will reach 100 million won (about 90 thousand dollars) and on May 17, in the midst of the controversy, Hwang Ji-hae held a press conference at Seoul City Hall. She explained that she wanted to revisit the historicity of the Yeomcheongyo Shoe Street, the first street of shoemakers in Korea. “[The exhibition] is significant in that shoes propose a way to rediscover values we’ve lost on the city streets. Shoes could be someone’s time or an old story. I hope people can understand installation art as part of concept art.”
The completed Shoes Tree was revealed for the first time on May 20, the opening day of Seoullo 7017. It will run until May 28 and be pulled down on May 29.