Right at Home with Lost Things

Stepping into the Shaun Tan exhibit at Dunkers Kulturhus felt like stepping into a childhood fantasy.  As a child, I never read Tan’s books myself, but I still effortlessly step into Tan’s world because it fills me with childlike wonder.  The exhibit, “Lost Things,” centers around Tan’s children’s book, The Lost Thing, written in 2000 and adapted into an Academy Award-winning short film in 2010.  However, the exhibit also includes framed pieces of Tan’s book The Arrival, as well as individual artworks.

The first room consists of pages from The Lost Thing, painted in oil with the words written out in pencil.  The shining colors and textures on the page bring the book to life; I wonder whether all of my favorite picture books as a child were initially exquisite paintings before being transferred into book form.  In addition, the way the graphite words catch the light enchants me.  The use of pencil rather than pen seems both childlike and immediately personal, like reading pages out of a child’s diary.  Even though the pages skip and jump to different parts of the story, I still get a sense of the narrative and the feelings of the story.  The setting of The Lost Thing is so rich with detail, convincing me this world must exist.

The most convincing part of this exhibit, however, was the living room.  The red walls were adorned with pipes and an eclectic mix of road signs; there were red velvet lounge chairs oriented in a circle around a fake TV, glowing with one of Tan’s images of a garden; and in the center of it all was a coffee table with all of Tan’s books, in Swedish and English.  The setup of the room was undeniably cozy.  Something about sitting in this room in a circle—even with complete strangers—in front of the TV, reading the same books, made you feel like part of the same isolated world.  This room felt like a sanctuary; like a corner of the world forgotten and discovered by just you and your fellow visitors.  It made me feel an immediate connection with my fellow strangers because we were equally immersed in this world created by Tan.  These interactive, immersive element to this room of the exhibit is undoubtedly what made it so effective.

 Living room

What makes the story of The Lost Thing so compelling, especially for adults, is the message at the end of the book.  After the narrator parts ways with the Lost Thing, the story fast-forwards to years later, when the narrator grows up.  The story ends with the lines, “I see that kind of thing less and less these days though. Maybe there aren’t many lost things around anymore.  Or maybe I’ve just stopped noticing them. Too busy doing other stuff, I guess.”  As we get older, we lose our ability to notice lost things—perhaps because our day-to-day concerns of surviving and managing our busy lives become more immediately pressing.  But when we are kids struggling to find our place in the world, we notice many lost things because we ourselves are lost.  We are able to empathize with both the narrator and the Lost Thing because we have all felt lost before.   

There is a sadness and nostalgia to finishing the book.  The coming-of-age at the end of the story is bittersweet.  After turning the last page, I wonder how many things I no longer notice in the world because I have habituated them and blocked them out.  It makes me wonder what adulthood has robbed me of, and whether children actually see much more than we do.