Ohad Meromi
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Ohad Meromi, born 1967
The Boy from South Tel Aviv, 2001
Styrofoam, paper, hair, plastic beads
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Anonymous gift in honor of Chonnikarn, Elijah, Jordan, Noah, Phuntsho, Yair, Yuval, Zara and all the children of the Middle East
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At the Helena Exhibition in 2002, Ohad Meromi displayed this sculpture in the main hall of Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, next to a structure resembling a border-crossing barrier. This adolescent African giant had made his way from the city’s southern neighborhoods, home to many of Israel’s third-world foreign workers, to the cultural center of the city’s well-fed bourgeoisie. The erotic image of the naked boy – his air of childlike innocence notwithstanding – dominated the center of the museum hall like the embodiment of a fantastic dream or nightmare and seemed to threaten to bring the entire building down on the heads of the culture-vultures inside.