The Little Prince and the Fox

The Little Prince and the Fox sit on a railing with their backs to the street. A place for one person has been left between them. This gap is part of the sculptor’s intention.

The Little Prince is the hero of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, a traveler from a tiny planet. The Fox is his interlocutor, who explains how acquaintance turns into attachment. In the book, they meet in the desert; artist Na In-ju brought them to Busan.

Na In-ju worked in sculpture and on urban art commissions. While working in Gamcheon, he got to know the residents and decided that The Little Prince would best convey their modesty and openness. For the public art project of two thousand twelve, the artist devised a continuation of the book: the Prince and the Fox traveled across Earth, reached Gamcheon, and sat down above the slope to talk about what they had seen.

That is why the synthetic-resin figures face the houses and the sea. The Prince asks questions, the Fox answers, and a vacant place is reserved for the visitor between them. Na In-ju wanted the person who came here to ask questions about the village too and find answers. He deliberately did not make a third figure.

When the sculptures were installed by the road in the autumn of two thousand thirteen, people immediately began sitting in this gap. A line appeared on weekends. However, the Prince’s and the Fox’s faces cannot be seen from the street. Some tried to photograph them from the front through the railing, dropped cameras, moved closer, and stepped onto the roof of the unoccupied house below. The roof was damaged. The artist acknowledged that he was pleased by the work’s success, although its arrangement caused other people considerable trouble.

A few years later, a similar composition appeared on a viewing platform in another Korean city. Na In-ju demanded an explanation and the removal of the copy: for an artist who lived on his own artworks, the recognizable pose of the Prince, the Fox, and a third participant was a protected work. Saha District owned the installed figures, but the copyright remained with the sculptor.

The backs of the two characters and the vacant place between them have remained. The line moves one person at a time, and each person sits exactly where Na In-ju deliberately did not place a third figure.