TOY

TOY is a huge installation in the image of Israeli Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai made of tens of thousands of used toy and game parts on an iron construction. 

The toys, which were meant to be thrown away, were collected in a huge collection project from kindergartens and the Israeli public also volunteered for the collecting.

The sculpture is 4 meters tall, 6 meters wide, 2 meters deep and weighs 2 tons. The installation was created with great care and sensitivity in the image of Netta Barzilai, with the hair rolls and unicorn horn identified with her.

With Barzilai as an example of female daring, innovation and creativity for the artist, the sculpture serves as the opening round of a wide-ranging international  initiative, encompassing multinationals like Google and Facebook, of a large-scale collection of old toys aimed at placing environmental sculptures by the artist in world capitals, aimed at promoting values of sustainability and art.

In the words of Levav Packer: “with me, there is often a connection between the material and the subject, like the sculpture of a squirrel made of acorns, a crow I created from sunflower seeds and so on.
To celebrate Israel is hosting the event, I wanted to create a homage to the Eurovision and to Netta Barzilai’s winning song, and since it’s about a TOY, there was an immediate connection in my imagination. I think the song’s message is very relevant to our time, to the ME TOO movement, and in general, I believe women have great powers, which are not sufficiently realized in world leadership and politics.

For that same reason, I turned the spotlight on pregnancy and childbirth in the series ‘From the Belly’: women and mothers who have gone through the common experience of pregnancy and childbirth will never choose war as an option, in my opinion. They will choose to talk and talk and scream and argue, but it will be solved with speaking, not with sending their children to battle. To me, that is the power of femininity”.