You know how that old saying goes “One man’s break-up is another man’s art.” Well maybe that’s not the exact phrasing but it’s appropriate for the MODO‘s new exhibit, part of a traveling break-up show from Croatia.
Officially called The Museum of Broken Relationships, the concept was created by Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubisic, two artists whose break-up inspired them to set up an art installation in an old shipping container in downtown Zagreb, Croatia. I can just imagine the conversation …
“You know what? We should take this pain, misery and anger, make it into art and invite all our friends to come and see the mess.” And that’s what they did, collecting their objects, writing descriptions for them, and exposing the end of their relationship to the world. Turns out, it was a phenom of an idea. Because, after all, everybody loves a good break-up story.
The Museum of Broken Relationships has toured all over the world, and in each city (Paris, Berlin, Maribor, etc.) the project organizers (those same two former lovers) asked locals to send in their very own lovelorn objects to add to the show.
“We usually get 100 to 200,” said Vištica at the exhibit’s opening, “but in Mexico we received over 1500 objects, our biggest donation yet. I think that means we’re in a place that likes to talk about love.” They received so many donations that on the 23rd of April, the show’s mid-way point, the MODO is going to switch them all out for others and give everyone’s pain an equal opportunity to have its fifteen minutes of fame.
It’s true, Mexico is for lovers, maybe even more so than Virginia. All you have to 
do is walk through a public park in the afternoon and you will see young, old, gay, straight, rich and poor lovers passionately making out on leaf-shaded benches. A lot of love inevitably means a lot of heartbreak.
So why not start with the shaving kit bought for an older, married man by his lover ten years his junior, whom he confesses to have never stopped loving. Or the forty-year old music box that symbolizes a first love that its owner can’t forget. How about the painting of a bright red vagina with a plaque beside it that says “this is a tiny representation of the “gift” given to me by my ex, that and the gynecologist bills.” Or the video of an eighty-year-old woman talking about a soldier she once knew or a chopped off handful of dreads or the puppet or the baby shoe. The crazy things that remind us of love…
This exhibit is proof positive that we imbue things with a significance that they don’t deserve, that doesn’t make sense, but that we can’t let go of. Donors’ stories, alongside each item, were full of catharsis. I could almost hear them heaving a sigh of relief as they dropped their donations in the mail – ridding themselves of the memories along with the object.
“It was a rainy April night and it was love at first sight” and “Now I understand that falling in love with the right person at the wrong time may be the saddest thing to happen in life” ooze love’s cheesiness at the spectators. But I dare you to not enjoy the sappy, stinky and overwhelming cloud of love that fills the room. In each story you’ll find something of yourself. We’re all a little masochistic and melancholic deep down.
Some objects bring us together and some pull us apart, said one of the show’s presenters. If that’s true, these objects happen to be on the losing end of that equation, but they live on in infamy at The Museum of Broken Relationships and you can see them at the MODO for a limited time only — one more reason to love this museum.
The show runs until June 8th at the Museo del Objeto del Objeto (MODO) on 145 Colima Street in Roma Norte.
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