Take a Walk in Our Shoes
A pair of shoes, an everyday passage in life. A wall of shoes with headphones for people to listen to stories shared by their owners of different age groups. You will find yourself giggling quietly at a pair of ordinary looking high heels and your breath will be taken away by old fashioned rain shoes from the last century. Everyday objects the simplest and most used hold incredible stories.
Ulfur
English
Audio Transcript
I got them at my graduation trip for my school, we went to Magaluf in Spain. They are really bad, they are shitty shoes, I got blisters on my feet and sores between my toes, but I’m gonna keep them forever I think. I think I lost my shoes the night before, so I had to walk barefoot in Spain, which for me, an Icelandic person, was like hell, it was really hot, the ground was steaming.
So yeah, it was my graduation trip, but I‘m not even graduating. I think it’s more about saying goodbye to your friends, because they are going out into their lives, starting their own thing. I didn’t go to this graduation trip to say goodbye to my friends in Ísafjörður highschool, it was more about saying goodbye to the people that I have been in school with for like 14 years, from the start of elementary school, like Ragnar, Margeir, Þorbergur, Guðmundur Sigurvin, Kolmar, you know, these people that have followed me for my entire life, since I can remember. Good, good people. People who I am gonna miss very much, so that’s what it is.
I mean you can call it what it is, which is just an excuse to drink for two weeks and try out the things you don’t get to dry out usually, party and various things. But I think it’s important, it’s a beautiful thing, so these shoes mean a lot actually.
Smari
English
Audio Transcript
So now I will start speaking in English, in “outlandic”, we have here this Muck boot pair which I used to wear for many years, it is the second pair of these Muck boots that I have had in my life. And I had these boots during the part of my life while me and my wife, Nína, were living in two worlds during the year. In the winter time we lived on an island in Ísafjarðardjúp, called Æðey, and in the summertime up in the highlands in the south, Landmannalaugar, where we at first had a fish industry and then it turned into a tourist shop.
In both of these worlds I had these boots on my legs, there are scars and holes in these boots, they came when I tumbled in the sharp rocks and of course in the winter time on the island, they were very nice for the agricultural work. I think there are no traces of animal shit visible on these boots anymore but there are other visible traces, there are color spots, and now we come to the third dimension in our life in that time.
In these years we were very much longing to live somewhere, to have our home for ourself, and that wish came true, now we don’t live anymore on that island nor in the highlands, now we live here in Ísafjörður, and looking at the boots we can see what color the house is, because I was wearing them while I was painting this new house of ours, so these boots have followed us through this, what can we call it? It’s almost a revolution, in our lives, from being a nomad, kind of, to being a settler.
Nina
English
Audio Transcript
So here are shoes from me, the most important about these shoes, they are green actually, they are dark green, slightly blue touch in them, and this is not very usual color you see everyday in Iceland, people mostly wear, black and brown and even some ugly shades of beige, they call it color, sometimes you can see red but for grown up people green is really so refreshing, so when I saw them I really fell in love, I loved them, even that they were too big on me, one and a half size, I think.
But then I can use it in every season in Iceland, interesting is that, when I see them, they are long and big then I remember, this typical ideas about being beautiful when I was young, that you should have really small feet, and in my time, it was still that you should be with a small mouth, and big eyes and long hair. But today I feel really relaxed and free about it, I’m happy that I have, I see those big shoes, I see those feet, and they are walking, I can stay, I am stable, I’m here, it’s functioning, it’s fantastic.
One of this thing about shoes, that when you love them, then one day they will just be finished, but those shoes, I think I tried to throw them out three times at least, I remember myself staying over the trash bin, with them in the hand, and then again found them somewhere under the sofa, so OK, it didn’t work this time, that’s why they are still here, and I look at them, oh! They are finished, I used them too much, horrible, I need new shoes, and then… wow, I can walk, and in these shoes! It’s fantastic, I’m still alive, and a moving person, this is how it is going with all my shoes, hopefully.
Kolbrun
English
Audio Transcript
When I look at these shoes all I can think of are crooked feet, stupid structure and discomfort. Really uncomfortable shoes, I don’t recommend them for anyone. When I was 18 I was asked to participate in a beauty contest, which I did, and it’s not like I am totally against contests like this but it was a weird experience.
The whole process, months of preparation where we had to learn how to act pretty, lose weight and be constantly judged. There we were, a group of young girls, dressed in bikinis on high heels being criticized for our appearance. Nothing seemed to be good enough. “Take smaller steps, walk slower, take bigger steps, walk faster, could you put your knees more apart?” We didn‘t even breathe right, “tuck in your belly and stick your chest out, oh sorry, you don‘t have any breasts, then just stay like that”. It was all very unhealthy and ridiculous.
I have this very funny image of myself standing in a beautiful bikini, on these heels wearing an Adidas winter hat. I was just this kind of character, it’s not that I didn’t want to go all the way, I was just the type that needed to oppose.
It is silly, sad and funny at the same time, when a hundred people show up to the big night, to watch you, in shoes that you aren’t able to walk in, wearing a bikini and trying to keep your knees out, with a smile on your face.
Kiddy
English
Audio Transcript
There was a gumshoe-fight in Leos‘ Shoe shop, around 1945 or 47. There was a lack of nice shoes for ladies, but there were these kind of gumshoes with fur on top and some of them had laces and others had a zipper, they stood in front of the door, hundreds of women, waiting to buy some shoes.At the time women had maybe one pair of regular street-shoes, a pair of slippers and one pair for nicer occasions. At the time women didn‘t live in affluence and didn‘t own many pairs of shoes, that‘s just how it was. When I see those kind of shoes I think of the traditional Icelandic womens‘ costume.My grandmother always wore that costume to funerals and always wore those shoes with it. She didn’t dress up often, but when she did, she wore that with her shoes.Some people called theIcelandic womens‘ costume the funeral costume. They didn‘t know it was the traditional Icelandic womens‘ costume, they just thought that women wore them solely for funerals. I remember, for instance, this one time that my grandmother wore those shoes, she just put her skirt on, a long skirt from the costume. She had this black jacket that she alway wore, and she walked uptown to buy herself another costume-jacket and when she arrived in the street, she met a lady and said: „ Who‘s being buried today?“. Because Dísa Alberts was wearing her funeral costume.
Siggi
English
Audio Transcript
The original purpose of these shoes were for hiking and that‘s how they were used the first year but little by little they evolved into being gardening shoes. They were always a little big but when you had your woolen socks on, thick woolen-socks and outside-clothing, they fit.
What happened was that our house in Hnífsdalur began leaking and we had to dig from a big part of it to fix it. This was a four to five year project. Since the leak started, and we began digging, until everything was finished and dry. We had to dig around the house and fix the drainage system and when these shoes came into the picture what was left to do was to put gravel into the large hole in the yard that was about 2 meters deep. We had to go quite many trips with the wheelbarrow back and forth so we were naturally really pleased to have done all this work ourselves in the end.
This pair of shoes showed up around the time when this work was halfway through. There is nothing really particular about these shoes, except that they always remind me of wetness. I feel like I’ve done a lot of “wet-work” in them. Rain and woolen socks – that’s what comes to mind.
Helga
English
Audio Transcript
When I was about 11 or 12 years old, everyone had these kind of shoes. Me and my little sister really wanted them, because they looked so cool.
We were competing on skis in Akureyri, and it was the first day of summer, we were just walking in the main street of Akureyri and looking at the windows, then we saw a shoe shop across the street where we were staying and we went with our mom and got them as a summer gift, and since then we never really let go of them.
We were in the Donald Duck games, that’s a skiing competition in Akureyri for kids, and after dinner all the kids in our ski team went outside to the street and took part in a kind of a roller shoe competition down the street, that was fun and amazing.
I remember sometimes I wore them when me and my friends went outside in the evenings and we just rolled to the town from the fjord instead of biking or something like that.
I don‘t know if there is a point with those shoes, but they make strolling a bit more fun and walking kind of more enjoyable.
Exhibition Photos
Installation Process
