Walking Men Taipei

Encircling the Fubon A25 site, these life-sized Walking Men are an extension of the Walking Men worldwide™, launched by Israeli artist Maya Barkai in 2010. Using website as platform, the project has invited photographers from around the world to contribute their photographs of the walking men in their residing cities. Each city has its own traffic light man that carries its own meaning and allusion. For instance, the pedestrian signal in Odense Denmark is the contour of the famous fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen, while its counterpart in Wellington New Zealand is to commemorate Kate Sheppard - a leading campaigner of women's suffrage, who made New Zealand a pioneer in granting women the right to vote.
Maya Barkai's Walking Men has been held in New York, Permm, Sydney and Buenos Aires. This time around, the artist and her Walking Men have come to Xinyi District, the busiest part of Taipei City to add some unique creativity to the fence encircling the A25 site. This is also Maya's first attempt at plants design, incorporating the Walking Men with the architecture green wall - a total of 115 life-sized Walking Men covering the 400-meter long fence. These lively and playful Walking Men installations have breathed new life into the standardized construction fence design, creating a different visual experience in the public space, all the while celebrating Taipei as a highly internationalized city where diverse culture and ethnicities blend seamlessly.