Toy Tales of the Crisis

It’s all about toys, argues blogger Nikos Papadopoulos, the man behind a photographic project using toys as instruments towards social satire.

Inspired by an incident in which he employed Playmobil pieces to explain something to his young son, he has developed this method as a way of depicting Greece during the crisis, including scenes of humans enslaved by ATMs, or sunbathers surrounded by refugees.

Thus, “Plasticobilism” was born, a project illustrating the conditions “that force you to break your silence as they produce an inner need for you to express yourself”. Plasticobilism has attracted wide interest with its sharp, funny and critical scenes of austerity at home, the refugee crisis, the violence in society as well as in warzones, and the consequences of people’s actions – or non-actions. 

 Described as an artist who could possibly be called a visual columnist or a toy cartoonist retelling the European crisis through Playmobil, Papadopoulos is a physics graduate with a PHD in astronomy who is inspired by current events “mainly because of the misery associated with them” to create images of satire – but always linked to the harsh reality faced by the people of Greece.