Dear friends,
Stari Grad Museum invites you to stop by Tvrdalj Square on Saturday, 30 May where the 1000 Cinderellas installation will be set up in the morning, and you will be able to see it until the evening!
The 1000 Cinderellas installation consists of a thousand discarded shoes that were found washed up on the beaches of the island of Hvar. The shoes were collected by Mark Boellaard, who was fascinated by the amount and variety of footwear he would find on the beaches on the southern side of the island. From 2018 to 2020, mostly in the winter months, he gathered a unique collection of cheap flip-flops, sandals, grandmother’s slippers, high heels, trainers, leather boots and more. Shoes in all styles, colours, and in various stages of disintegration, that floated from all over the Mediterranean to end up on the island of Hvar.
A thousand shoes, a thousand unknown stories that together form a commentary on our current relationship with waste and serve as a warning about the enormous ecological consequences of the dumping of waste in the sea. If in such a short period a thousand shoes can be collected on a few Hvar beaches, how many shoes are floating around in the Adriatic? What does this say about the total amount of trash dumped in the Adriatic Sea?
This installation was created to raise awareness of the problem of marine debris and inspire people to reduce the amount of garbage they produce every day. Even the smallest contribution on a personal level counts. It is our responsibility to preserve the environment for future generations!
Mark Boellaard is a Dutch artist who has been living on the island of Hvar since 2012. At the core of his work lies the idea of recycling and giving a new value to waste material. This can be seen both in his works in collage and in the Assemplage series, which consists of more than eighty assemblages made from trash found on the island’s beaches.
See you on Tvrdalj Square!