Shoe Stories at the Israel Museum, Youth WingShoe / Boat by Sarit Shani Hay - Exhabition

While a shoe is designed to be worn, this large-scale object invites visitors to step inside it. Moving between sculpture, furniture and architectural environment, it creates an experience in which material, memory and imagination converge.
The work grew out of the universal childhood gesture of stepping into a parent’s oversized shoe. By enlarging this familiar object to an architectural scale, it is transformed into a space where play, memory and imagination become intertwined.
The object was meticulously handcrafted around an iron structure, upholstered in leather and finished with hand stitching and leather embroidery. Its interior is completed with crisp, starched bedding, emphasizing the contrast between the sculptural exterior and the intimate softness within.
The title of the work emerged during the photo shoot, when a toddler stepped inside the object and instinctively called it a “boat.” In that moment, the essence of the work was revealed: a poetic object that invites a journey through the imagination.
Shoe / Boat invites children and adults alike to enter one of the most symbolically charged and universal objects in human culture.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Youth Wing | 2026
Exhibition: Shoe Stories
Curator: Orna Granot
Photography: Roni Cnaani
Dimensions: 200 × 90 cm
Materials: Steel structure, leather, foam upholstery, hand stitched leather, hand embroidered leather, starched bed linen