Nitzan Mintz & Dede Bandaid

Nitzan Mintz 

Nitzan Mintz is a visual poet based in Tel Aviv. She began working a decade ago in the streets of Tel Aviv, where she would create visual poetry for specific locations in the city. She later continued to create studio pieces as well.

The public sphere has a central role in Mintz’s artistic process, as it is her main source of inspiration. As a Tel Aviv native, her personal growth and change has been echoed by the dramatic changes Tel Aviv has undergone in recent years. In her poems, Mintz attempts to verbalize personal and collective emotional struggles. Her poems are later developed into her visual pieces. She mainly uses leftovers from the public sphere, industrial materials, paint and letter stencils. Her final pieces facilitate a unique connection between text, form and color, allowing a new experience for the viewer. In her pieces in the public sphere she often considers the history and nature of the location, along with its visual aspects, thus deepening the meaning in her final piece.

Mintz has created pieces in the public sphere and has exhibited her work in different art venues and events in many cities in the world – New York, Miami, Montreal, London, Paris, Prague, Vienna, Berlin and more.

“My pieces are collages of words and materials. They are a combined product of words, places, materials and forms. My poems describe failures along with aspirations. I stretch between the two in attempt to put in words what cannot be reconciled: the inability to return to childhood, a lost love, social and political expectations that have crumbled, gender related conflicts and a complex one-sided relationship with god….Hence, my studio and the outdoors exist in an ongoing symbiosis. Outdoor pieces are placed in selected locations I chose for their history, their surroundings and the actual events that occur around them. Studio pieces have an aesthetic derived from the urban landscape and the outdoors. The studio allows exclusive techniques and treatments, alongside the development of new methods that can be later applied outdoors.”

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Dede Bandaid

Dede is a Tel-Aviv based, urban narrative artist, who utilizes various mediums to communicate within the public arena. He started creating his works after finishing his military service, and continued to develop and elaborate them while completing his undergraduate studies at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Nowadays his works can be viewed at galleries, exhibition spaces, various art events and in the streets of art capitals around the world, such as London, New York, Berlin and Tel-Aviv.

Dede’s inspiration stems from the urban landscape, and from the social and the personal questions it evokes. As he gathers stories and structures hidden within the ever-changing city streets, Dede examines and questions the man-made lifestyle people create for themselves, and reflects on absurd, paradoxical human existence. While visiting new places, a tension between Home and Away often rises and influences both his studio and outdoor pieces.

Outdoor locations and found objects often serve as a point of departure for the pieces he creates. The techniques he later applies, such as assemblage, collage, painting, photography and installation, are chosen based on their ability to highlight the original sources of inspiration and the stories they carry. This essence is usually elaborated due to Dede’s tendency to work in ongoing series that allow him to expand and deepen his messages. Wooden planks, newspapers and found cardboard, alongside man-made leftovers, constitute Dede’s pool of materials. These materials create tangible connections between his ideas and the setting in which he chooses to work.

Dede’s works are always site-specific, both in the theoretical and the practical aspects: they facilitate a solid relationship between the concept that generates them, the specific location where they appear, and the materials and methods used to create them.

Dede is motivated by the deep need to leave something after him, by the need to be meaningful and to gain meaning: his art is, for all intents and purposes, a statement of Existence.

“I was seeking a way to express and heal my wounds. The band-aid then became a symbol for all kinds of difficulties – personal and social — seeking remedies.”

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