Animation, 0:29 minutes
In this short and concise animated film, using a minimalist drawing style based on contour lines, Revital Laskik creates a seemingly simple and innocent situation: a child playing with a toy soldier.
When the toy breaks apart in the child’s hands, angrily thrown and shattered into pieces, it raises, in the current social and political context, significant issues related to the values and worldviews that shape our lives here in Israel. What can we learn about a reality where a child’s toy is a soldier doll, in a country where wars are an inseparable part of its existence and children are directed toward military service, with all that it entails? Is this how a child copes with this harsh reality? Is throwing and breaking the toy an act of frustration and rebellion against the establishment and the predetermined path set for youth in Israel? Can reality be turned into a game? Can one control reality as if it were a game?
The situation described here can also exist in a therapeutic context, where the toy serves as a tool for self-expression and a means of creating a simulation to deal with emotions, conflicts, and needs. The toy becomes a projection tool, through which the child expresses their inner world, even without words, in a protected space. Similarly, the animated film allows the artist to confront harsh reality, express complex emotions, and soften existential concerns that trouble many of us these days.
This work by Laskik is part of the War Toys exhibition series, which addresses the complex and difficult reality by highlighting the gap between it and the innocence of childhood play.
Rina Gnosov
Exhibition Curator
