İstinye Park hosts Museum of Broken Relationships

As part of its Valentine’s Day activities, Istanbul’s İstinye Park shopping mall is hosting the “Museum of Broken Relationships” exhibition through Feb. 14.

The exhibition, which is traveling around the world, makes love stories immortal by collecting mementos of failed relationships in each country it visits.

The Museum of Broken Relationships was founded in an old department store by Olinka Vistica, a Croatian artist based in Zagreb, and artist and co-curator Drazen Grubisic after consoling friends over their unsuccessful romances.

“The pain caused by a breakup often produces a strong creative drive,” said Vistica. “Some people turn to writing who had never written before, and it’s this emotional experience that makes it possible.”

“We developed the idea of a Museum of Broken Relationships where we can put the objects, get rid of them and not stay connected with that energy, but keep them and preserve them from oblivion,” she added. “The exhibition is supposed to act as a kind of therapy, so that instead of destroying objects, they can be moved to the museum to convalesce.”

The exhibition displays many items that could initially be perceived as junk, though they often hold deep personal significance for the people who donated them. The collection includes everything from romantic and touching letters to different gifts given to lovers, such as teddy bears and photos.

Unlike the “destructive” self-help instructions for recovery from failed loves, the museum offers every individual the chance to overcome emotional collapse through creation – by contributing to the museum’s collection. The individual gets rid of “controversial objects,” triggers of momentarily “undesirable” emotions, by turning them into museum exhibits, the curators say, and thereby participates in the creation of a preserved collective emotional history.

A wedding dress and a wooden leg

The wedding dress in the exhibit, for instance, was donated by Susanne Schikl after her marriage ended. “I liked the idea that I could give something away that awakened painful memories for me,” she said. The wooden leg was donated by a Balkan war veteran who had fallen in love with a nurse in a field hospital; a note displayed next to it reads, “The prosthetic had a longer lifespan than the relationship.”

The first contributions to this unusual museum collection came from cities such as Zagreb, Split, Ljubljana, Maribor, Sarajevo, Skopje, Pula and Belgrade, which had not so long ago been in the same country, one that painfully fell apart in the ’90s. They came from “a broken territory,” often witnessing how a “breakup” of a country can influence even the most intimate part of lives, the curators say; they tell about “small” dramas happening in the shadow of “big” historical events. After the success of this first display, this unique museum is now touring the world.

Donations from Turkey

Those who want to donate something to the Museum of Broken Relationships can fill out a donation form at www.brokenships.com or on the group’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/brokenships. After Istanbul, the donated objects will travel the world as permanent pieces of the collection.

It is also possible to make donations to the virtual collection of the Museum of Broken Relationships. To do so, donators should take a photo of the object and send it to info@asktangeriyekalanlar.com along with its story.