when water seeps through the grains of sand under your feet is an artwork deriving from the novel, Gaenmaeul by Young-soo Oh. The film, based on the same novel and also titled Gaenmaeul (The Seashore Village in English), was filmed in Ilgwang in 1965.

It is the story of a young woman named “Hae-soon”, who loses her fisherman husband only 10 days after their marriage because of a storm. But, commonly, there are several widows in this village since a lot of fishermen die at sea while they are on fishing trips for a living and to support their families. After her husband dies, a young man named Sangsu becomes Hae-soon’s suitor, and her brother-in-law and mother-in-law, who spot the couple, order them to leave the village before rumors spread out and bring shame to the family. So they leave Gaenmaeul and start working at a quarry but as fate has it, Sangsu also dies from an accident. Eventually, Hae-soon returns to the seaside village and the widows welcome her back. The novel reflects the passive image of women of that time and depicts their tragic lives from a fatalistic point of view.

The artist, inspired by this old novel, started collecting women’s stories in Ilgwang by interviewing women living in the area to capture their memories of Ilgwang as their living place, home, and reality. Dukkyoung Wang debunks gender stereotypes and ideas about the coast and sea as places dominated by men, reminding us that women throughout history have been an inherent and important part of sea histories and livelihoods that depend on the sea.

The glass bottles in the installation contain the women’s stories as messages in bottles floating in the vast sea. These bottles reach one room, a private and innermost place that represents the beach, a place where each body senses and drifts. This is the place covered with sand where Hae-soon lived, the artist lives, and we live together.