Nitzan Mintz: I am a 33-year-old visual poet born and raised in Tel Aviv. I started creating my poetry as graffiti when I was 17 and since then never stopped even through my army service and my studies at Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv.
Creating both verbally and visually gives me the space to show my poetry and to paint at the same time. People can look at my works and read them at the same time as a holistic picture.
I create in public spaces around the world and I connect my words with the locations and their history as site-specific pieces containing poetry, paint and textures.
Dede Bandaid: I am a 37-year-old visual artist and painter born and raised in Tel Aviv. I started creating graffiti at 14 and continued creating and evolving after my military service as a form of self-healing from my PTSD. I studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and at the Geneva University of Art and Design.
An anonymous creator trying to get away from definitions, I like to keep my artistic freedom to shift between different formats and ideas using a variety of techniques. I like communicating and conveying different ideas with passersby through public spaces and alternative and conventional spaces, making people look twice and maybe see something new.
Nitzan and Dede: We arrived in New York City for an artist’s residency program in September, so on the 7th of October we were sleeping when our families phoned hysterically and told us about this endless nightmare.
On October 8, we came up with the idea of the #KidnappedFromIsrael guerilla poster campaign together with our amazing partner in Tel Aviv, Tal Huber, the founder of Giraff design studio. With no budget and many volunteers, we managed to design and run this campaign to help the hostages return home.
Our campaign spread worldwide thanks to thousands of goodhearted people who care deeply about the hostages and the country. We all felt and knew we could have been abducted to Gaza if we were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nitzan: Jews have a tendency to disagree with each other; that’s part of our DNA. Dede and myself are now in a position where even if we do not agree with other Israelis we try to lower the flames. We’d rather be with and serve our people no matter their opinions. Our enemies are too many and too cruel and we can’t afford getting lost alone.
Since October 7th, Dede and I didn’t create much. We focused on the campaign for the first four months of the war but now it has become harder to reach audiences globally due to rising antisemitism and the war in Gaza.
We will try to find the strength to create and to express our emotions and stories through art but it seems to be a hard task for us. Before the war, motivation and inspiration came easier to us. We would just walk in the streets of Tel Aviv or NYC, staring at an old building and bam! Inspiration!
Nowadays we feel that our lives are threatened, that nothing means much if it’s not about surviving and staying strong, keeping our proud Jewish and Israeli identities. All this death, hate and destruction shook our cores as creators. We will probably bloom again soon creatively. We just need to digest what we’ve experienced.
“Our campaign spread worldwide thanks to thousands of goodhearted people who care deeply about the hostages and the country.”
Dede: Before the war, what I considered a challenge to overcome could be a huge, difficult painting like the old abandoned Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv that I transformed — painting illegally for five nights — into a giant set of windup teeth. It is very high and I had to do it from the ground without being noticed and during heavy winds coming from the sea.
In general, art has helped me to recover from my PTSD from army service. I replaced my inner struggles with creating as a form of releasing tension, thoughts and stress. But honestly, since the war, a challenge is simply to find art important enough to keep creating like I used to do before.
Nitzan: I have struggled with depression since the age of seven. It’s my life’s goal to cure myself from this illness. I find myself struggling and winning with a lot of self-awareness and work. I feel that I’m finally climbing from my own abyss and looking at things from a higher perspective. My art is a powerful healing power in fighting depression.
Nitzan and Dede: We surround ourselves with people who care about Israel dearly. We purchase everything we can from Israeli-run businesses. When we are in New York, we support Israel by staying united with our community, putting up posters and going to nonviolent rallies and events that are meaningful and helpful to Israelis and Jews. We are extremely vocal on social media too, and are not afraid of the antisemitic art world or Hamas supporters.
We will never give up the idea of peace. But now it seems to be so far and lost we are focusing on surviving and fighting. We need to win this multiple-arena war first. Time will tell if we will ever witness peace in our lifetime. We are not naïve and will not hold on to this dream without a partner on the other side.
We need brilliant minds to become a better nation. We need better security, better understanding of the enemy, better education and leaders and people on both sides of the fence who grew from pain and are interested in changing the course of history and finding a solution to end this suffering.
Above all, we will always learn from our Jewish heritage and we know that if we won’t have a strong state we won’t exist. The world out there is not a safe place for Jews. It never truly did welcome us and never will. We only have each other and our allies and I hope the next generation will know it and act as one unit.