A six-week installation honouring the victims and survivors of the Nova Music Festival attack in Israel will open to the public in Toronto on Wednesday.
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition at 1381 Castlefield Ave. recreates the scene of a music concert held in southern Israel that was attacked by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Of the roughly 3,000 attendants,
were killed and 44 were abducted.
The exhibition was launched last year in Tel Aviv to raise awareness about what the organizers refer to as “the largest massacre in music history.”
“This may be one of the most unique exhibits and experiences that you might find,” Evan Zelikovitz, a Canadian representative with the installation, said ahead of a media tour on Tuesday. “The Nova Music Festival was the tip of the spear on October 7. Peace-loving people who came to dance from many nationalities, from many religions. It was not about being Jewish. It was not about the country of Israel.”
The installation features items from the Nova Music Festival, including hammocks, shoes, water bottles, phone cases cigarettes and other personal belongings of participants that were left behind after the attack. Throughout the installation screens replay defining moments of the October 7 atrocities, including the kidnapping of Noa Argamani and the parading of Shani Louk’s body through Gaza.
The space is intentionally darkened, adding to the weight of the tragedy, while incense and dry ice add to the atmosphere.
“This is a journey from the light to the darkness and then light again,” Shani Ivgi, a festival survivor and representative of the bereaved families delegation, said before entering the installation.
“You can touch things. Everything that you’ll see inside is real, from the toilets to the tents to the signs and the bar. People (were) murdered literally inside. It’s a very important thing that the world must know that this cannot happen again,” Ivgi said. “As we say, ‘We will dance again.’ It’s not just a sentence or a slogan. It’s our way of life.”
Ivgi was an employee at the festival when rocket sirens rang out in the early morning hours of October 7, warning of incoming rocket fire. She fled to a nearby bomb shelter, but her fear of tight spaces and a sense of impending danger led her to leave minutes before Hamas terrorists slaughtered people inside. Ivgi eventually managed to get back to her car and sped back home to central Israel. On her drive back, her car was hit by a barrage of rifle fire from Palestinian militants.
She attended previous installations of the exhibition in Miami, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, and said the lesson she took away from the experience was that “we are light.”
“We are not just a tragic story,” she continued. “ I have a lot of friends who were murdered. I have one family member who was murdered, and still, life is stronger. I know that we’ve been through so much darkness and we saw so much darkness in our eyes…. Only light can win the darkness. And this is our values.”
Michal Ohana, another Nova Festival survivor, echoed Ivgi’s sentiment and said that the installation mirrors the difficult emotions of that fateful day. “The exhibit starts from the light to the darkness and to the light again,” she said. “We are here to show the healing. This is my healing; to share my story, my way.”
On Tuesday, January 28, Commissioner @MickySteinberg hosted a special tour of the Nova Music Festival Exhibition. The multimedia, self-guided exhibition featured testimonials from survivors as well as artifacts from the site of the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. pic.twitter.com/FeU8RrDQpl
— Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners (@MiamiDadeBCC) January 29, 2025
Ohana was living in Portugal at the time and was invited by her friends in Israel to attend the Nova Music Festival. “It was the best festival that I was at,” she remembers of her time partying throughout the night before Hamas attacked. Ohana told the Post she ended up hiding beneath an Israeli tank for several hours following the terrorist attack, during which she was spotted and shot in the leg.
“I (am) just waiting there. Bleeding. I called my mom and said, ‘I love you, but I think I’m going to die,’” she said. Ohana was eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers and brought to a hospital where her older sister was giving birth at the same time. “For me, this day is like two miracles. I stayed alive, and I have a new nephew.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida Poilievre also attended the advanced screening of the exhibition on Tuesday.
The installation will be open until June 8.
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