Biography
Maya Gelfman (b.1978, a nomad, mostly based in the USA).
From painting to installation, performance to street-art, Gelfman uses her body to investigate transformation, fragility, resilience, beauty and decay. Her practice is immersive and deliberately spontaneous. She uses somatic techniques to engage with the sensory field around and within her: brushstrokes synchronize with breath, sound navigates the gestures of hands and feet, colors and textures emerge from the landscape, the time of day, the season. Her works are psycho-geographic explorations. Mapping the places she inhabit, both physically and emotionally. In this slow, performative process she serves as both an observer and a participant.
This approach draws inspiration from Fluxus, action painting, improv theory, and meditation. But the fascination with the immediate and the visceral is also deeply personal. A near-death experience during a heart surgery at age four and the long recovery that followed, instilled in her an embodied understanding of impermanence. It still fuels the urgency and totality with which she creates today.
Born to a family of Moldovan immigrants, in 2017 she chose to become a nomad herself, and has been traveling the world ever since. It’s both a life-path and an artistic practice. Her work is rooted in “site and time specific” methodologies: facilitated by movement and change, propelled by a commitment to impermanence.
Since graduating with a BA from Shenkar Art Academy (2006), Gelfman’s work has exhibited extensively.
With eleven solo exhibitions under her belt, six international residencies, and dozens of group shows.
Her works were featured at the the 60th Venice Biennale, Italy (2024), the Zuckerman Museum of Art, USA (2024), the National Gallery, Thailand (2017), the Israel National Museum (2016), and art fairs in London, Monaco, Brussles, Miami, and Washington D.C. Notable residency programs include the SAPH (China) and Windgate (USA), and was shortlisted for the Halcyon Fellowship (2019). Her work was published in the media and in international art-books (in London, Germany, france, Colombia and USA), and can be found in private and public collections, including Lettenmayer & partners, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Rivka Saker, Hagit Borenstein, Goldman, Erlich, Gaver, Edelstein & Co. Law, Creative Discovery Museum, Historic Building 98, Milu Hotel.
Beyond institutional spaces, she gave a TEDx talk on her intentional practice (2013).
She co-founded 'Mind the Heart!' Project (2009), a street-art project that has reached over 100 cities globally.
In 2017 she co-created The Serendipity Experiment, a public performance committed to “Saying Yes”. Strangers they met on the road sent them on a winding route across North America, spanning four years and 100,000 km. She has been on the move ever since, between the U.S, EU and Asia.
Statment
Art making happens not only with my hands and eyes, but also with my ears, skin, gut, breath.
My paintings are psycho-geographic explorations that map the places I inhabit, both physically and emotionally. Working through a slow, performative process, I occupy the roles of observer and participant simultaneously. Layer by layer, color, sound, and gesture accumulate as each work evolves, responding directly to its surroundings to form a dense record of a place, an experience, and a moment in time.
This practice is grounded in immersion, using the senses as artistic tools and allowing the boundary between self and environment to become porous. Each work develops in real-time dialogue with its context, absorbing the specificity of place, season, and moment. Thus every painting becomes an aggregates of lived experience, capturing the essence of a site while also revealing my position within it, there and then.
My fascination with change, with the immediate, is visceral and deeply personal. Teetering between life and death at the age of four during heart surgery introduced me early to liminal zones and thresholds. It compelled me to explore the dichotomies inherent in existence, and fuels the totality with which I create to this day. It also informed two major decisions: working across diverse fields (the “white cubes,” the “streets,” and nature), and merging my artistic and meditative practices into a nomadic way of life.
Movement across continents, mediums, and contexts embraces transience, while my practice remains a grounding force. Together, they provide a flexible foundation from which to investigate the meeting points between internal and external landscapes, revealing frictions and pathways toward connection, balance, agency, and release. Every new place drives the work and vice versa. Each project becomes a temporary refuge and a stage where the fleeting takes shape. While this process results in tangible artworks, its essence remains performative: art and life exist in the act of perceiving and creating, and in their inherent impermanence.
CV / Resume
Education
Graduated from Shenkar School of Art & Design, BA, 2006
Solo Exhibitions
2024 Neither Here Nor There, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
2023 Bodies of Work, ONKAF Gallery, New Delhi, India
2022 The Unimaginable Horizon, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2019 Form, Re-Form, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2017 Outside looking in, National Art Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
2016 Split Ends, Tel Aviv Artist House, Israel
2013 Spark, Zadik Gallery, Jaffa, Israel
Process, Tel Aviv City Municipality Arts and Culture division, Israel
2012 Rise!, Tsuk Gallery, Netanya, Israel
Heartbeats, Weiss House, Tel Aviv, Israel
2010 Strings, Artists House, Tel Aviv, Israel
Duo Exhibitions
2025 Accumulation of Horizons, Les ateleirs Lalande & Coercore, Paris, France
The Gaze, 3.1 L'espace Liminal, Saissac, France
The Realm of Darkness has many Colors, 3.1 L'espace Liminal, Saissac, France
Group Exhibitions
2024 Strangers Everywhere (Swatch Pavilion), Venice Biennial, Venice, Italy
Twenty Four Windows, Fifth Floor Gallery, SAPH, Shanghai, China
2023 Pole Culturel de la Manufacture, The Royal Manufactory, Montolieu, France
2019 Metamorphosis: The Place of the Past in the Present, CITYarts, Orlando, FL, USA
2017 ARTROOMS, Meliá White House, London, England
Radical Love, Crypt Gallery, London, England
2016 Wire/less Connections, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Vitrinart, The Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Grand Opening, Milu Gallery Hotel, Florence, Italy
2015 Stories the Streets tell, The Israeli Children’s Museum, Holon, Israel
Hamekarer, The Old Wholesale Marketplace, Tel Aviv, Israel
S2G, kulturkueche, Mönchengladbach, Germany
Presence, Tirosh Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Temporary Crew, St.Art Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2014 Slideluck III, Tel Aviv, Israel
Launching Meshuna, Meshuna Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2013 Testing Tools Festival #10, Beit Tami, Tel Aviv, Israel
Note to Selves, Container, Jaffa port, Israel
7F, 7th Floor, Tel Aviv, Israel
Base Colors #2, IIsrael-Lebanon border, Peace & Activism Art event
2012 Heroes in Distress, Art Basel, Miami, Overture/Scope art fair, USA
Once I was a House, art event, Caesarea, Israel
Small Scale - 20\20, Zadik Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Creation Cycle, Hangar 2, Jaffa Port, Israel
Free Art Friday, Tel Aviv, Israel
Spring Festival, Shapira neighborhood, Tel Aviv, Israel
Base Colors #1, Israel-Syria border, Peace & Activism Art event
On the Fence #3, Jaffa, Israel
Love Art Make Art, Open Studio, Tel Aviv, Israel
2011 Haifa Walks, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel
ZEMIKEA, Tsuk Gallery, Netanya, Israel
Simu Lev!, The Container, Tel Aviv, Israel
Sea Breeze, Artist Residency, Bat Yam, Israel
On the Fence #2, Jaffa, Israel
Simu Lev!, Dining Room, Tel Aviv, Israel
Ward Nasse, Ward Nasse Gallery, New York, USA
2010 Cannons & Muses, Tama University of Art, Tokyo, Japan
De:frost Festival, Jerusalem, Israel
2009 Herzliya Biennial #2, Herzliya, Israel
Secret Art #4, Beit Mani, Tel Aviv, Israel
Love Art Make Art, Open Studio, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tan, P8 Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
1.2.3.4 I Declare an Art War, Shorashim Gallery, Israel
White Trash, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008 It’s a Small Big World, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
2005-2007 Designers of the Future, Tel Aviv, Reading Power Station, Israel
International Woman’s Day, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dialogue, Tzavta Theater, Tel Aviv, Israel
Residencies
2023 Swatch Art Peace Hotel Residency, Shanghai, China (June-September)
Windgate Residency, KSU University, GA, USA (September-October)
Core Dance Company, Atlanta, USA (April-May)
2022 Roza Center for International and Interdisciplinary Art, Krakow, Poland (June)
2019 The Sichow Foundation, Krakow, Poland (Feb)
2019 Halcyon House fellowship, Shortlisted.
Collaborations & Public Actions (under Mind the Heart! Project)
2023 Wishing Wall, mural & masterclasses, Georgia Highlands College, Cartersville, GE, USA
MTH! in Kennesaw, masterclasses, School of Art, Kennesaw, GA, USA
Mantra, mural, Core Dance, Atlanta, GE, USA
2022 SEED & NTTL, mural & performance, Rosa Foundation, Krakow, Poland
Looking at Place, exhibition, Katzman Contemporary, Dover, NH, USA
O/Art, fundraiser for Ukraine, Atlanta-Chattanooga, TN & GA, USA
2021 Introduce Yourself, exhibition, Kliger Gallery, Lund, Sweden
2019 The Poland Project, mural & performance, Sichow Foundation, Artist Residency, Krakow, Poland
2018 New Poetics of Labor, Al camello camello y al amor amor, exhibition, Espacio, Medellín, Colombia
MTH! in D.C., event, By The People Arts Festival (Smithsonian, National Cathedral, Union Market,
Walter Reed, Arc West, D.C., USA
Bodies of Water, permanent installation & masterclasses, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, USA
The Spaces Between #1, exhibition, JCC, Foster City, CA, USA
The Spaces Between #2, exhibition & mural, PJCC, San Rafael, CA, USA
MTH! in Houston, exhibition, City Hall & Brown Convention Center, Houston, TX, USA
Towards One, permanent installation, Building 98, Marfa, TX, USA
2017 Be Here Now, permanent installation, Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga, TN, USA
MTH! in Hillary R. Clinton Library, event, Little Rock, AR, USA
MTH! in Atlanta, exhibition, Decatur Art Alliance, Decatur, GA, USA
MTH! in Apopka, permanent installation, HCC, Apopka, FL, USA
MTH! in Portsmouth, exhibition, Prescott Park & 3S Gallery, Portsmouth, NH, USA
MTH! in Tel Aviv, Pilot for USA Tour at Beit Tami, Tel Aviv, Israel
Publications and Books
2022 "Unravelling Women’s Art, by PL Henderson, Aurora Metro books, England
2018 "Al camello camello y al amor amor" by Cristina Velásquez, NPOL, Colombia
2016 "Wall, wall" by Dominque Lafon, France
2015 "Street Messages" by Nicholas Ganz, Dokument Press, Germany
2013 TEDx TLV Talk: "Creating out of not knowing"- the creation of SPARK Solo Exhibition >> to see the talk
* Curitorial texts: www.mayagelfman.com/curatorial-texts >> to read the texts
Press & selected articles: www.mayagelfman.com/press
Selected collections
Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, USA
Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China
Lettenmayer & partners, Czech Republic
Goldman, Erlich, Gaver, Edelstein & Co. Law, Israel
Historic Building 98. Marfa TX, USA
Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga TN, USA
MILU Art Hotel, Florence, Italy
Magdas Hotel, Vienna, Austria
Herzliya Municipal Library, Israel
M & M Schmitz, Vienna Austria
R. Saker, Caesarea, Israel
O. Shatil, Tel Aviv, Israel
S. Sternbach, Tel Aviv, Israel
H. Bornstein, Tel Aviv, Israel