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West Hampstead Jewish Community Centre arts director Barbara Emsani with the wailing wall |
Jilted lovers begin rebuilding with the pub ‘wailing wall’
Messages of heartbreak, pain and revenge become art installation
IT’S not quite as extreme as boiling the family bunny rabbit, or cutting the sleeves off a wardrobe of suits.
But ouch! It still has to hurt to see your secrets laid bare by jilted former partners on the wall of a busy bar in West Hampstead.
The Gallery, in Broadhurst Gardens, is hosting a new interactive art installation consisting of a “wailing wall” where shunned boyfriends and girlfriends can leave messages in full public view outlining what exactly drove them to split with their one-time beau or belle.
The idea came from trendy New York art collective Illegal Art, which ran a similar scheme in Manhattan earlier this year.
The West Hampstead-based Jewish Community Centre liked the idea and its arts director Barbara Emsani has brought it to London.
She said: “We wanted to create a platform for people to share their heartbreak with others. You can come in and basically write what you want. We can all relate to this – we have all been there. Divorce, separation, one-night stands, three months to 20 years. If it ended, whether it was good or bad, it always stays in our head, and sometimes our heart.”
Some of the messages are gentle: someone called Anthony is asked, simply, “Why?”, while others are just plain rude: “Lezbot: you were a great lover but I fell in love with a penis...”
One would make a great country and western tune: “I was whaling [sic] over you, but now my blubbering has to stop. I’m no longer hooked. There are other fish in the sea...ha!” In another, poor “Sam” tells “Kate” that she “took my heart, and my wallet”.
Others are more vicious: “I don’t make mistakes, I just date them”, and others have a potentially serious tinge to them, such as the message left by “Rachelle”: “When are you going to take that DNA test?,” it asks, before signing off with “love, always, from me and the little one. PS: denial just eats away at you.”
Barbara said: “These stories are at once very personal and very close to people’s hearts. I was surprised by some of them. Many are really hurtful stories, and others are actually quite aggressive.”
She said her favourite is one by a woman who outlines her ex-boyfriend’s love of PlayStation, drinking beer and leaving her waiting around for him to call. “I was with some girls the other night and we could all really identify with it,” said Barbara.
Still, she hopes the “wailing wall” will help smooth the brows of unrequited lovers.
Barbara said: “It can be easier to be comical about an experience of heartbreak rather than brood on it.”
But despite the nature of the messages, she believes Cupid is still fluttering around out there, somewhere. Barbara said: “Romance is not dead. Although, as this wall shows, it is perhaps diluted.”
On Sunday, the wall is being celebrated by a special Break-Up night, featuring stories of splits – and “perhaps making up” – at the bar with poets and singers. |
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