Mending toys, reconstructing play
This is a story about not throwing away part of your own story, or your own symbolic world — but turning it into art, into repair, into agency: building new solutions out of what is usually seen as useless material.
The Process
A ship that loses its doors. A hat that falls from a doll's head. A skateboard that loses its wheels. What can these ordinary objects become, when a child becomes the architect of play?
Over six months, we worked with five- and six-year-olds on waste, recycling, and the habit of discarding — bringing in an artistic repertoire that let them reimagine the use of everyday objects, turning what could have become garbage into something else entirely.
Vik Muniz — who builds portraits and landscapes out of garbage, sugar, wire, and other cast-off material — became one of the teachers for this project, alongside [xxx]. From them, the children learned something about how to plan a construction, and how to carry their own desires, tastes and imagination into a tangible, real new toy: a swimming pool, a clock, a football field, an ice-cream shop, a pirate ship, an amusement park, a hot-air balloon, a ferris wheel, a garage, among many others.
This is a story about not throwing away part of your own story, or your own symbolic world — but turning it into art, into repair, into agency: building new solutions out of what is usually seen as useless material.
The final toys
Miracle, Oil on canvas 200cm x 130cm
Red Square, Oil on canvas 200cm x 130cm
Dialogue, Oil on canvas 200cm x 130cm