My connection to toys began in 1995, shortly after I watched Toy Story for the first time in the very week it premiered in New York. I remember sitting in the theater, jaw dropped, feeling my life shift in that moment. Everything I thought, understood, and imagined changed when I was introduced to the secret life of toys.
From that day on, I truly believed that toys have souls and lives of their own. I could see and feel the depth of emotional connection they hold – the sense of attachment and responsibility, along with the full spectrum of emotions they carry: jealousy, pain, fragility, fear, and longing.
I fell in love.
Since then, I’ve watched Toy Story hundreds of times. Randy Newman’s song from the movie played at our wedding; my children grew up with it; and toy figures fill every shelf in our home. They became part of me.
A toy is an object created for play, imagination, and experience. Playing with toys is an open and free act — it allows us to invent, express, and reflect worlds, both real and fantastical. A toy, therefore, carries emotional weight – of choice, belonging, and identification. It is not only the material, color, or texture it’s made of, but also the web of cultural meanings it embodies – its representation, essence, and function.
Although a toy is often labeled as a child’s object, for us adults it serves as a tool for processing and representing reality and dreams in an intuitive, humorous, and unmediated way, free of hierarchies – a medium that can heal.
After graduating from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, I took a course in toy invention, which led to experimental creations. This exploration resulted in a feature in the press and a series of works exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Toys mirror | 2002 – 2025
A chance encounter between an old mirror on its way to the trash and a bag of toys left by the door led me to connect them instead of letting both go. That’s how I created my first toy mirror.
When I opened my studio a few years later, it was clear to me that I wanted to share this magical experience with others — and so I created the first Toy Mirror Design Workshop.
The first workshop took place at my sister’s home and was so wonderful that more and more people began inviting me to host new ones. Each workshop required toys — so I collected them.
Over time, I met thousands of women, girls, educators, therapists, creatives, scientists, and innovators. Through these encounters, I shared values of imagination, playfulness, possibility, and creative freedom.
I donated toys to children’s shelters, created activities for women at risk, collaborated on memorial projects using toys and personal objects with bereaved families, and even donated toys to the Monkey Park in Ben Shemen. Every time, I discovered that toys are a universal material – intuitive and familiar to everyone – and that’s why every project was an absolute success.
Alongside the workshops, I continued celebrating and creating my own toy-based art – dismantling, assembling, and reimagining the broken pieces into a new whole.
The Circus | Art installation | 2012
The toys became my row matirial | 2012 – 2025
“Toyism” exhibition | 2018
“Toyism” was exhibition I initiated, curated, and exhibited in Holon, where toys were presented not as childish objects, but as a visual and emotional language.
Toys are us | Collaborative art installation | 2018
In that exhibition, I presented the installation “Toys are Us” which invited visitors to take part in the creation process. Through the simple acts of bending down, choosing, collecting, and attaching toys to the wall, participants were encouraged to reflect on the toys we buy and throw away – and to reconsider our consumer consciousness.
The collaboration took shape through an open invitation to participants – to trace the act of collecting: to bend down and pick up discarded toys scattered on the floor, to observe the abundance piling up, to choose, connect, and become part of a new creation.
Within a few days, the wall was overflowing. Hundreds and thousands of items of all shapes and sizes were glued together, becoming part of who we are – our choices, memories, small loves, secrets, games, consumer culture, our sense of responsibility, and our relationship with material, humanity, and the environment.
Independence Day | Toys are my words | Mix media | 2018
My gun collection | Ready made | 2014-2018
Sheroine | readymade assemlages | 2014-2018
I turned to be a broken toy myself
Around the same time the exhibition opened, we experienced a financial collapse. Yet the loss of material possessions allowed me to see things differently — to look at the objects in my life and seek new value and meaning.
Amid the “nothingness,” I began collecting toys again — obsessively. I collected so many that I eventually ran out of space.
Drowning in heaps of plastic toys | Video art | 2018
The fractures are my opportunity
I realized that if, over the years, I’ve been collecting broken toys and assembling them into a new whole, then I can do the same with myself. I can take my "broken pieces and reconnect them into a new whole, this time in the way I choose.
Inspired by the Sheroine assemblies, I created Popeyit using Olive and Popeye images.
I also understood that if, throughout the years, I’ve gathered hundreds of thousands of plastic toys and turned them into something with environmental meaning, then changing my own story might create impact far beyond me. If I can inspire children and adults to reuse and create with what already exists instead of buying something new, I can help shift our culture of consumption. When there’s a problem — maybe the way I work, create, and choose can become part of the solution.a
At the end of that year, my life turned upside down when I decided to transform everything I had created with broken toys into a story of sustainability and environmental awareness.
MeRoar | An Art Collaboration | TEDxJaffaWomen 2018
MeRoar is a collective artwork created by hundreds of women who took part in the TEDxJaffaWomen 2018 event.
It was an opportunity to come together and build the largest toy mirror ever made — a reflection not only of our faces, but of our shared creativity and strength.
Beyond its playful surface, MeRoar celebrates the importance of seeing ourselves with wonder — of reconnecting with the joy, curiosity, and freedom of our inner child.
The Beach Ball sculpture – A giant toy | 2019
The Beach Ball sculpture | Tel Aviv | 2019, and again in 2022
The Beach Ball sculpture, 3.5 meter high, is made of thousands of plastics that have been collected along with Israeli shores. It reflects the amount of plastic we buy and discard, aiming to raise awareness about reducing single-use plastics on beaches.
Still Life | 2024
A reflection on consumer culture — on everything we buy, use, and discard. It speaks of our growing detachment from nature, replaced by a synthetic, plastic world, made in China.
Unlike Pop artists who glorified the beauty of consumer objects, my work explores their afterlife — the moment when desire fades and waste begins.
Turning this huge amount of consumption into environmental value
Sometimes I imagine the journey of a single toy or object – what it went through from the moment it was conceived until the moment it was discarded. From the first sketches, the prototypes, the product designer, the investor, the toy company, the manufacturing plant, the battery and lighting factories, the packaging designers, the shipping, the marketing, the buyer, and the seller. I imagine who bought it, who gifted it, who played with it, who placed it back on the shelf, and who finally let it go. So many people believed in every toy — in every small piece of plastic that came into the world — and yet, with unbearable ease, we throw it away.
Photos: Eric Sultan, Or Kaplan, Ran Yehezkel, Ella Faust,