During our life, we collect countless objects, but we make a distinction between those which are temporary and those which will be our companions for a long time. These are what professor Sherry Turkle defines as evocative objects for the way they relate to our emotional experiences and serve as 'recipients' of our personal meanings. 

 

The Mini Museum Project is my personal mini-museum, where I will virtually collect the objects of my past, present and future that are very special to me and represent me in many ways. Ultimately, I intend to use this website as a tool for constructing personal meaning and to learn to cherish the objects I own. My relationship with objects is mutual: I tell stories about them and they tell stories about me. The idea of sharing this personal process is to inspire other people to start their own collection of evocative objects as creative expression, self-reflection and, maybe, self-discovery.

 

I first approached the topic of evocative objects in my MA dissertation project, where I proposed a practical activity for exploring a museum collection by following feelings and emotions, in order to find personal significance in otherwise pretty impersonal objects on display. I designed it as a way to encourage people to become more interested in museum exhibits, especially addressing those who tend to think that museums are not places for them. You can read the entire work here. I will continue to develop this idea because I believe in its potential application to real institutions. In parallel, now I'm investigating the other side of the coin, which is its application to objects we all can own in our everyday lives.