The airline ticketing agents were having a fiasco trying to decide what additional fees should be charged, as our checked bag was outside any of their typical luggage guidelines. And going through customs with a fish shaped miniature coffin tends to raise a few questions as well.
We had six days(Monday to Saturday) to complete the design coffin for the Gwangju Biennale. Eric had decided beforehand that the design coffin for the biennale should be an object that is unique to Korea. The soju bottle was the perfect choice as soju is a popular liquor that is native to Korea and thus symbolic of the Korean culture.
For the next couple of days we continued to work on getting the wooden structure of the soju bottle made. We fortunately had the luxury of power tools to help expedite the making process. Unfortunately I was sick for part of the time, so Eric worked on the coffin with Jean-Michel assisting while I was under the weather. On friday, all the woodworking was complete and we started to “dress” the coffin by planing it into shape and filling any holes with wood filler. It took 3 coats of primer, with filling and sanding in between coats to get the coffin ready for the final coat of paint.
We sprayed the final coat of (soju) green paint on the coffin and then lined the inside of the coffin with white satin cloth. By noon we had begun to work on sketching out the details on the soju label. We worked as hard and as fast as we could, painting the details of the maple leaves and the typeface of the soju label; but we were unable to complete the final touches to the label before the Biennale Hall closed at 6pm. We woke up early on sunday morning and completed all the final details on the soju bottle before we had to begin our journey back to Ghana.