Yesterday, a 50ft long sculpture which culminates in a vagina was place in Tel Aviv, Israel to mark International Women’s Day.
It was created by artists Sasha Kurbatov and Vanane Borian, and is said to have taken about a year to build.
But what isn't obvious straight away is that the sculpture has been built using the sex worker calling cards that are plastered around the city - in protest at the exploitation of sex workers.
פתחנו בחגיגות יום האישה הבינלאומי!מאות שעות של איסוף ברחובות העיר,עשרות ימים של הרכבה,חמישים מטר אורך,שלוש מטר גובה,אלפי כרטיסים,עשרות אלפים א.נשים.במעגל הזנות.ויום אישה אחד.
Posted by [Sasha Kurbatov](#) on
Which translates to:
‘We opened in celebration of international women's day!
Hundreds of hours of gathering in the streets of the city,
Dozens of days of jigsaw puzzle,
Fifty Feet long,
Three meters tall,
Thousands of tickets.
Tens of thousands of Women.
In a circle.
One day, and a woman.’
In Israel, prostitution is legal but ‘organised’ prostitution such as brothels and pimping isn't and Tel Aviv is widely considered to be the 'center' of prostitution in the country.
The first-ever government survey into prostitution in Israel, it was found that annual payments to sex workers came to approximately 1.2 billion shekels - the equivalent of $308.2 million in 2014. They found that 95% of sex workers were female and there were somewhere between 11,420 and 12,730 in Israel; meaning each sex worker had around 660 clients a year. As well as this, up to 1,260 minors were either employed as sex workers or at risk of it. Tel Aviv is seen as the ‘centre’ of prostitution in the country.
In 2012, the US State Department raised Israel’s rank to Tier 1 in their annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which is for ’Countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's (TVPA) minimum standards.’ In their 2015 report one of their recommendations for Israel was to ‘Impose stricter sentences on convicted trafficking offenders, consistent with the gravity of the crime’.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.