What does it take to forget a partner?
When Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić they decided that their beautiful relationship was no longer working and that the butterflies in the stomach had paled by silence, they preferred to take it with humor . While one of the two made that silent move in which the marital home is abandoned, the joke arose. “We should make a museum with the things that remind us of the other and thus not to dig into the wound” they said to each other.
The idea, which sounded like a last minute joke, regained strength three years later and ended up becoming The Museum of Broken Relationships . Dražen, a sculptor by profession, called his ex and, together, they began to collect souvenir-objects of their own and of their friends who lived poorly stored and ostracized. The requirements to exhibit them in showcases was that they had a special meaning, that symbolized a moment of passion, tenderness or affection of a courtship or an expired marriage . His friends saw it as something therapeutic to better heal wounds. An "evil of many" comparable to a drunken spree with colleagues plagued by intimate confessions.
A collection of stubble, painful memories, vinegar wounds
In 2006, after making a careful selection, they exhibited their first collection at the Zagreb Glyptothek and. They spent four years going around the world with the project. From the trip they made it clear that their fans wanted to collaborate and add to the collection. And, little by little, they accumulated the objects and separated them into different thematic exhibitions (underwear, teddy bears, or mutilated garden gnomes in fits of anger and madness after divorces) .
A MUSEUM 2.0 The museum of broken relationships opened in October 2010 with full honors. The final headquarters was located in the upper part of Zagreb , in Ćirila i Metoda street. It is pure irony, since the newlywed couples who leave the Town Hall and the church of San Marcos pass through there every day. It is about, in addition, the only private museum in the entire city.
And all this is art? Its own creators say yes, that "it proceeds from assuming that objects can have a connotation that exceeds their usefulness” . Apart from this discussion, it must be recognized that it is fun to look for the most bizarre and original of the whole place. Can be found from faded wedding dresses to velvet handcuffs and other sex toys . It is worth paying attention to the credits and 'footnotes' of each work of art exhibited and, although the guides are quite complete, sometimes it is even missed that its former owner is there explaining its meaning. Their perfectly reachable 300 meters Squares house a collection that lives in a continuous process of renewal of the objects that people send. They are neither edited nor modified, they are what they are and in their naked reality lies the charm and success.
The collaboration of sad citizens has also turned it into one of the most 2.0, most collaborative and interactive museums in the world . Visitors can continue their point of sadness or philosophy in an area called 'confessions'. Here, each tourist writes in the open books the last disappointment of him or leaves his story recorded in the cabins with broken voice. If any of you have your heart in your bones after the umpteenth and inexplicable breakup, try to laugh a little at yourself by visiting the museum and seeing that you are not the only ones, that, although Amélie counted so many simultaneous orgasms in her Paris, she could also having counted the fights and the goodbyes.
And if therapy doesn't work, stop by the gift shop and buy bad memories eraser . It is not the disturbing invention of Lacuna INC to forget the moments shared with him/her from the great film ' Forget about me ', but it is something to hold on to.
Objects are not modified or edited