ORHAN PAMUK | THE INNOCENCE OF SHOES

The culmination of decades of omnivorous collecting, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul uses his novel of lost love, The Museum of Innocence, as a departure point to explore the city of his youth. 

Source: The Innocence Of Objects (back cover)


Box 2 (detail)
Photograph: Refik Anadol


My well-intentioned fiancée was wearing Sylvie, a perfume I’d always liked, and these imitation net stockings that, as she knew very well, aroused me, with high-heeled shoes. She arrived elated, thinking that my “sickness” was retreating, and I could not bring myself to tell her that, quite to the contrary, I had called her here to rescue me from the scourge, however briefly; that I longed to embrace her as I had embraced my mother when I was a child.

Orhan Pamuk
The Museum of Innocence (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)



Box 2
One day I was inspired and sketched this box (below) with a pencil. We put the objects in the box according to that design, moving things around by the tiniest of fractions and relying on trial and error to get it right. Imagining the boxes one by one as objects beautiful in their own right has added a touch of lyricism to the museum.

Orhan Pamuk
Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)


Box 2 | Sanzelize Butik
Photograph: Refik Anadol


At least twice a day my mother would find an excuse to ring me at the office, and after telling me how long she had cried after coming across some possession of my father’s at the back of a wardrobe - his black-and-white summer spectator shoes, for example, one of which I respectfully display here - she would say, “Don’t leave me alone, please!” and would go on to remind me that I shouldn’t stay in Nişantaşı, that it wasn’t good for me to be alone either, and that she was definitely expecting me for supper in Suadiye.

Orhan Pamuk
The Museum of Innocence (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)


Box 51
My father’s shoes, which my mother came across at the back of a wardrobe 
and cried over.
Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)


Box 23
Here I display Füsun’s white panties with her childish white socks and her dirty white sneakers to evoke our spells of silence.

Orhan Pamuk
Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)


Box 23
Photograph: Refik Anadol
Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

Amore, musei, ispirazione. 
Il Museo dell’innocenza di Orhan Pamuk a Milano
Dal 19 gennaio al 24 giugno 2018
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi

Love, Museums and Inspiration. 
Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Milan
From January 19 to June 24, 2018
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi



Istambul | A view of the floor of the Museum of Innocence
Photograph: Refik Anadol
Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)


 

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