Exhibit turns heartbreak into art

Museum for Broken Relationships in Berlin shows mementos from love affairs turned sour

BERLIN: How to heal a broken heart? Some shred pictures and burn letters, but one Berlin man solved the problem by taking an axe to his girlfriend’s furniture.

The axe, along with several dozen other artifacts that range from house keys to a red glitter reindeer, are part of an exhibit commemorating love affairs turned sour now on display at Berlin’s avant garde Tacheles gallery.

The “Museum for Broken Relationships” was started in Sarajevo in 2006 by two artists who wanted to get rid of mementos from past affairs, Zvonimir Dobrovic, the show’s director, told Reuters. “By giving to the show people distance themselves from their painful memories,” Dobrovic said.

Thanks to donations from around the world the collection now comprises roughly 300 pieces, although only about 50 are shown at any one time, he said. The exhibition will be travelling to Stockholm next year, and galleries from Sao Paolo to Tokyo are also interested in hosting it, he added.

“It shows that the pain of heartbreak is universal,” Dobrovic said of the ever-expanding collection. “All over the world people can relate to love and art.” In Berlin the collection acquired the reindeer, purchased by a couple for their Christmas decorations, as well as a wedding dress and the axe, which the owner donated to the show once he had turned his girlfriend’s sofa into firewood. “But many of the things we have on display also reflect a particular time and place,” Dobrovic added.

One such artifact is a love letter scribbled in 1992 by a boy who lived in a refugee camp near Sarajevo. Each item in the collection is accompanied by a description penned by its erstwhile owner. “It’s voyeuristic, but in a nice way,” said Dobrovic. “We have a window into the lives of others.”

Although some of the descriptions are sad, most are humorous. “It shows that in the end, people can laugh at their own misfortune,” Dobrovic said. For an example Dobrovic pointed to a miniature book, a declaration of women’s rights donated by a woman who left her boyfriend after nine years. The couple lived in the Croatian town of Split.