For one collecting couple, the sidewalk is as good as a gallery. It can yield life-long gems ranging from playing cards to pacifiers. In fact, the supply chain for this duo’s trove spreads across New York streets, shoot sets, thrift stores, and more unexpected planes of intrigue. Multidisciplinary artists Bobbi Salvör Menuez and quori theodor amass items including T-shirts, cassette tapes, and spoons with the same stamina as a blue-chip art collector, but perhaps a more personal bent as well. The objects, as they outline them below, represent a special brand of nostalgia that relates back to both childhood and their bond with each other.
Salvör Menuez—a creative director, Purple magazine editor-at-large, and actor whose work spans independent film and television (including a recent credit in Landman) treats their collection of baubles as an extension of the professional roles they occupy: talismans that accumulate around a project the way a costume might accrue meaning over time. Theodor, a conceptual artist working fluidly between food, social practice, fashion, and research, brings and similarly archival sensibility, tracing desire through found objects and biographical references. “Pairing a Victorian doll’s garment with the plastics of my youth always makes my day,” they share.
CULTURED sat down with the pair to unpack the systems behind their shared discipline, and the emotional logic of what classifies a treasure primed for adoration.
Where does the story of your personal collection begin?
Bobbi Salvör Menuez: Childhood. Objects have always been my familiars, and there’s always been something I’m magnetizing with. An anchor through more chaotic times, international moves, divorce—the little things in my pockets could always come along with me. I remember when I was 10 years old, I was into collecting rubber bands off the street and wearing them all on my left wrist. The collection eventually grew so large, it started to cut the circulation off in that arm, so I retired that one. Then, when I was 15, I was into collecting playing cards from the street, in hopes of creating what someone once described as a “life deck,” which is when you complete a full deck with these odd cards along the way. I completed my “life deck” before I turned 20. And so on and so forth.
quori theodor: Before I can remember. I always collected and fetishized objects. A series of birds made of mushrooms, tiny ceramic houses, leather—some of these early interests I carry with me today.
What factors do you consider when expanding your collections?
Menuez: It’s intuitive, an interest that starts to bloat a little out of control, into the territory of obsession. It’s a form of searching for treasure, it’s a feeling.
theodor: The rubric is specific yet ephemeral. Mostly based on feeling, yet having a mental log of what I already have to supplement or complement. It’s a long-term curation, sometimes with very clear goals and other times, completely meandering.
Tell us about your sourcing process. Do you look to personal contacts, vintage stores, friends and peers, or otherwise?
Menuez: Well, once you’ve gathered enough of something, the items start to come your way with less effort. For example, our friend Precious [Okoyomon] knows quori and I both love spoons, so they will regularly get us new ones from their work travels. We also received a massive silver spoon as one of our heirloom wedding gifts from my mother, passed down from her family in Iceland. The gravity of the collecting starts to work both ways. The more puzzling part for me is how the collecting stops, or purges, or pivots.
theodor: For one collection—found pacifiers—there’s a very clear spiritual system that I came up with about 18 years ago. It goes like this: iI you find a pacifier on the ground, it’s a special good day, a wink from the universe. But if you don’t find a pacifier, your day can still be good. So the pacifier becomes a treasure hunt of spiritual bonuses, only additive. I have hundreds of them now. There’s also some setting myself up for success. When I started the game, I lived in a neighborhood where there were a lot of babies. Now again, I live in a different neighborhood where there are a lot of babies.
What feelings or ideas do you hope your home collection inspires in the people who experience it?
Menuez: That play and caring for one’s inner child is a worthwhile and meaningful pursuit.
theodor: Permission. To enjoy whatever the fuck you like.
If you could snap your fingers and instantly own the collection of anyone else, who would it be and why?
Menuez: I don’t think I’d want anyone else’s collection (unless hoards of money count) but really because the process is more relevant than the result. To receive a collection so fully formed would skip over some of the satisfaction. However, I will name a few collections of interest. My friend Mistress Hinako, the rubber queen of Tokyo, owns 1,000 whips and has the largest latex collection in all of Asia. I love to visit her studio, as it’s really like a kink museum to me. I would be delighted to tinker around Amy Sedaris’s famous miniature collection. I would also quite enjoy rummaging through the erotic photo archives of Eric Kroll. I also must shout out the picture collection at the New York Public Library, as I love going there and flipping through the folders of printed images they’ve. organized for anyone and everyone to enjoy!
theodor: One of the fashion collections from the book Happy Victims. Those collectors are so dedicated and thorough. I could never replicate that kind of focus.
You oscillate between collecting intricate knick-knacks, spoons, graphic tees, and more. Are these categories related or independent streams?
Menuez: I believe there is a through-line when people bring or gift me things that “fit” the collection. How to define that through-line is more mysterious to me.
theodor: Definitely related. The thread is hard to parse, but there’s a dedication to the uncanny, hyper-cute, referential, archival, and erotic in all of them.
Tell us about a preferred era to collect from. What makes it special?
theodor: I feel like it’s the anachronisms that interest me. Pairing a Victorian doll’s garment with the plastics of my youth always makes my day.
What work in your home have you spent the most time returning to?
theodor: We have incredible art from our friends. During my morning yoga, I look at an undone image of Martine Gutierrez from her latest show, where audience members were allowed to do whatever they wanted to her. She has one eyebrow shaved and is dripping in milk, totally spent. The splayed-out pose complements some of my stretches, and I make direct eye contact with her war-torn, made-up face.
Do you see collecting as an extension of skills you’ve honed in your professional life, or something entirely new?
Menuez: It is very connected for me. It’s a mode of translation and dialogue with the visual and material. It’s a practice of world building, and a practice of spatial and aesthetic relationship inquiry. When I am acting, certain objects accumulate and function like character talismans. When I’m consulting with artists, musicians, or designers, I learn about them through the objects they respond to, collect, or create. When I’m creative directing, I have to tune my magnet to the frequency of the project and become like a net, in order to collect the images and materials that are relevant to that particular project. It’s like the task of divining rods—this sense of searching and listening is the through-line.
theodor: I do a lot of research in my work, which can function like a treasure hunt. Sometimes the treasure can be found in land acquisition contracts or historical food documents, and sometimes it’s literal treasure, like toys.
What have been three of your most surprising finds?
Menuez: The first is a signed tape cassette of Cosey Fanni Tutti’s “Time to Tell” for surprisingly cheap on eBay. The next would be a batch of throwaway test print shirts from a silkscreen factory, with competing graphics printed in repeated and appealing disorder. The last would be my two-ended spoon, hand-carved by an artist in Gowanus, and/or my silver “mustache spoon” found at a flea market in Paris last year!
theodor: The sheer quantity of Le Creusets that I’ve collected off the street. Bobbi completed my collection of a specific milk glass cup series with fruit on it, and then found a miniature replica of the same set. I collect doll clothes, and later got our 3.5 pound chihuahua who fits them all. I also found a cute notebook that turned out to be the diary of a young child, which I return to a lot.
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