This sculpture was made directly on request by a collector who saw my performance at Poppositions art fair in Brussels in 2015. I can only assume that he was moved by my use of converse shoes in another piece, to bring me two pairs of those very trainers, but the story he told me put them in a very different realm, in my opinion. He gave me a pair of his own old converse as well as a pair from his ex-boyfriend, and just as it happened, they were both the same size. Since it was from an ex, and they had been abandoned, I wanted to take that into my remake, and expand the story with the sculpture.

Instead of cutting away the soles and stitching them together as I had with my previous piece, instead I made sure the bond that held them together was not permanent, but rather I made it optional. I attached a zipper along the edges of the soles, so that the two right shoes from both the men as well as the left shoes could be zipped together. This would involve an act of choice, to get close enough and then pull the zipper closed. But I also wanted to emphasize, that by getting close, especially to an ex, there is also another kind of pull that can happen, a much more spontaneous one, not caused by will but simply there. For this I attached a number of super strong neodym magnets to the soles of the shoes. They are strong enough to clamp the shoes together should they be brought close enough to each other, but not so strong that they can’t be pulled free again. For a stronger bond an act of will is required, and the zippers need to be pulled shut.