Mesa

I had an assignment to create my own version of ‘mesa’ by dutch artist herman de vries.  His work consisted of a collection of items he had accumulated over the years, arranged in a graphical manner.  As a way of documenting time and one’s relationship with objects, shoes were for me a way of expressing time and history.  When I put the collection together, I was reminded of the time and place I acquired each pair, what I did in them.  They made me reflect on why I bought them, who I felt I was or what character I was trying to embody -it became a self-reflexive exercise that made me critical of certain choices I had made.  Among them why I regularly buy two of the same shoe but in different colours, why had I gone on a hunt for nicer running shoes when I decided to start running when I had a perfectly decent pair already, why did I allow a Berlin haze to influence my purchase of some extremely loud chainmail looking ankle boots in the summer of 2006 (three rows from the top, far right)and despite rarely wearing them since, why do I insist on keeping them.  Makes me think.  I don’t keep a journal and am shit at regularly using my agenda, I never do status updates on facebook nor use twitter (the purpose still eludes me), my email and written correspondence is deplorable and yet my collection of shoes (and those let go over the years) remains a concise diary of my adult history.

And as I’m always trying to grow in some way, I hope to add these adorable hiking boots from Hayashi to the shoe diary come fall.