Biography
Maya Gelfman (born 1978, Israel) is a multidisciplinary artist, working at the seam between painting, installation and street-art.
A graduate of Shenkar College of Art & Design, in 2006, she’s since had eight solo exhibitions. The Ninth will open on October 20th, 2022 in Vienna, Austria. Gelfman has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. Among others, at the Israel National Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Haifa Museum of Art, The National Gallery in Bangkok, Art Rooms Art Fair in London, Art Basel Miami, Tama University of Art in Tokyo and in the Smithsonian and the National Cathedral, Washington D.C. USA (As a part of By of the People Art Festival).
Her works were featured in the media, both in print and online, as well as in films and on TV. They were published in four art books: in Germany, France, Colombia, U.S.A and England. In 2013 Gelfman gave a TEDx talk about her artistic process, sharing the stage with Tel Aviv’s prominent women leaders.
She’s also a well-known street-artist. Her unique technique of drawing on walls with tangible materials (yarn, foam, duct-tape) is her signature.
In 2015 Paper Magazine named her among the top ten street-artists in Israel. Back in 2009 Gelfman co-founded a street-art project called Mind the Heart!, with her partner, Roie Avidan. Since then it reached over 100 cities across 5 continents.
In 2017 Gelfman & Avidan embarked on The Serendipity Experiment - a 365/24/7 performance in public.
Their premise was to accept the unknown as an artistic tool by relinquishing control. The duo donated their belongings, left their home to a foreign country, and invited strangers to dictate their route, schedule, and next encounters. At every location that they were sent to, they created a site-specific work. The experiment was planned for one year but ended up lasting four, spanning 60,000 miles across 47 states in the U.S.
Artist statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist, working with painting, installation, and street-art.
My work investigates different facets of trauma, whose impact is heartbreakingly omnipresent in our culture, both on an individual level,
as well as systemically. Through my work I explore a foundational query: Can traumatic events also serve as beneficial catalysts,
gateways to profound realizations having to do with power and choice?
Confrontations with trauma are woven throughout my personal history. As a child, I lived through a near-death experience
while undergoing heart surgery. Experiencing that visceral connection between life and death informed the realization that opposing forces can,
and often do, co-exist. In the context of my work, it initiated an inquisitorial approach to contradictions and inspired an artistic-somatic practice.
I believe external forces shape inner landscapes and my practice is grounded in symbiotic relationships that initially appear contradictory: dichotomies such as beauty that encompasses crudeness and weakness as a source of strength. These fuel my own search for agency,
on the path to find balance and release. My work is mixed-media not just in its choice of materials but also conceptually, drawing upon theoretical thought and automatism, ancient mythology, and contemporary culture.
Symbiosis also facilitated the decision to work in two parallel fields – the ‘white cubes’ and the public spaces. In both arenas, the works are handmade, tactile, and aware of their space. In the streets, they’re created as a performative action, reacting to a specific location and point in time. In the studio, the canvas is laid on the floor and the marks are intrinsically connected to the body’s movement.
Breakdown of series:
The early Paintings ("Red Heart", 2007/8 and 2009) are naïve drawings of bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Minimalist figures floating
in white spaces. With time, layers appear ("Illusions & Reality", 2010-2012 and 2013), representing the struggle to resolve past, present and future.
In these years I practiced a slow Sisyphean process, in which I was working for months on each piece.
Then a change took place, and my practice shifted into a dance-like rituals. ("Release", 2014-2016). These paintings were done in one continuous session. Each session took between a day to three days of working continuously.
The Serendipity Experiment 2017-2021
Between 2017 to 2021 I was immersed in an experimental performance. Together with my partner I traveled across the USA, over 100,000 km (60,000 miles), creating site-specific works in public spaces, on a daily basis.
Living on the road for four years (of which two in the pandemic), all the while dedicating myself to “the unknown” as a guiding tool, herald a big shift in my artistic practice. It changed the way I perceive stability, home, possessions, necessity. It altered the way I live and, subsequently, create.
The Unimaginable Horizon 2022-2023
My return to the studio in late 2021, uncovered the tantalizing realization that this journey of serendipity that I’d embarked on, fundamentally changed my work. Inspirations and techniques that I had previously relied on now felt rusty, irrelevant. I couldn’t just pick up from where I left off, but rather, had to allow the full breadth of my experiences to manifest directly onto the canvas. The new works don’t rely on external references, but instead turn their gaze inward. Without an apparent anchor in the literal or representational world, an uninhibited creativity was unleashed. So far, I’ve painted fifty paintings, intuitive works that represent a form of cartography–to places within and without, familiar and unknown– they are maps to blocked paths and new roads.
CV & Resume
Born in 1978, Israel
2001-2006, graduated with a BA from Shenkar College
Mediums: Painting, Installation, Street-art
Website: www.mayagelfman.com / Email: mayagelfman@gmail.com
Solo Exhibitions
2022
The Unimaginable Horizon, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, curator: Dr. Michael Schmitz
2019
Form, Re-Form, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, curator: Dr. Michael Schmitz
2017
Outside looking in, National Art Gallery, Bangkok, Curator: Rattapong
2016
Split Ends, Tel Aviv Artist House. Curator: Raz Samira
2013
Spark, Zadik Gallery, Jaffa, curator: Hana Coman
Process, Tel Aviv City Municipality Arts and Culture division, curator: Maayan Nevo
2012
Rise!, Tsuk Gallery, Netanya, curator: Maya Kashevitz
Heartbeats, Weiss House, Tel Aviv, curators: Vera Pilpoul and Hagit Burnstein
2010
Strings, Artists House, Tel Aviv, curator: Orly Hoffman
Group Exhibitions
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
Vitrinart, The Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
Grand Opening, Milu Gallery Hotel, Florence Italy
2015
Stories the Streets tell, The Israeli Children’s Museum, Holon
Hamekarer, The Old Wholesale Marketplace, Tel Aviv
S2G, kulturkueche, Monchengladbach
Presence, Tirosh Gallery, Tel Aviv
Temporary Crew, St.Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2014
Slideluck III, Tel Aviv
Launching Meshuna, Meshuna Gallery, Tel Aviv
2013
Testing Tools Festival #10, Beit Tami, Tel Aviv
Note to Selves, Container, Jaffa port
7F, 7th Floor, Tel Aviv
Base Colors #2, Israel-Lebanon border, Activism Art event at IDF military bases
2012
Heroes in Distress, Art Basel, Miami, Overture/Scope art fair
Once I was a House, art event, Caesarea
Small Scale - 20\20, Zadik Gallery, Tel Aviv
Creation Cycle, Hangar 2, Jaffa Port
Free Art Friday, Tel Aviv
Spring Festival, Shapira Neighbourhood, Tel Aviv
Base Colors #1, Israel-Syria border, Activism Art event at IDF military bases
On the Fence #3, Jaffa
Love Art Make Art, Open Studio, Tel Aviv
2011
Haifa Walks, Haifa Museum of Art
ZEMIKEA, Tsuk Gallery, Netanya
Mind the Heart, The Container, Tel Aviv
Sea Breeze, Artist Residency, Bat Yam
On the Fence #2, Jaffa
Mind the Heart, Dining Room, Tel Aviv
Ward Nasse, Ward Nasse Gallery, New York
2010
Cannons & Muses, Tama University of Art, Tokyo
de:frost Festival, Jerusalem
2009
Biennial #2, Herzliya
Secret Art #4, Beit Mani, Tel Aviv
Love Art Make Art, Open Studio, Tel Aviv
Tan, P8 Gallery, Tel Aviv
1.2.3.4 I Declare an Art War, Shorashim Gallery
White Trash, Tel Aviv
2008
It’s a Small Big World, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2005-2007
Designers of the Future, Tel Aviv, Reading Power Station
International Woman’s Day, Tel Aviv University
Dialogue, Tzavta Theater, Tel Aviv
Residencies
Artist in Residence, at Windgate Residency, KSU University, Georgia, USA (September-October 2023)
Artist in Residence, at Swatch Art Peace Hotel Residency, Shanghai, China (June-September 2023)
Artists of the season, at the Core Dance Company, Atlanta, USA (April-May 2023)
No time to loose & SEED, at the Roza Center for International and Interdisciplinary Art, Krakow, Poland (2022)
The Poland Project, at the Sichow Foundation, Krakow, Poland (2019)
Collaborations & Public Actions (under Mind the Heart! Project)
2023
Wishing Wall, Georgia Highlands College, Cartersville, GE, USA
Mantra, Mural, Core Dance, Atlanta, GE, USA
Bodies of Work, Solo Exhibition, ONKAF Gallery, New Delhi, India
2022
SEED, Rosa Foundation, Artist Residency, Krakow, Poland
Looking at Place, Katzman Contemporary, Dover, NH, USA
O/Art, fundraiser for Ukraine, Atlanta-Chattanooga, TN & GA, USA
2021
Introduce Yourself, Kliger Gallery, Lund, Sweden
2019
The Poland Project, Sichow Foundation, Artist Residency, Krakow, Poland
2018
New Poetics of Labor, Al camello camello y al amor amor, Espacio, Medellín, Colombia
MTH! in D.C. at By The People Arts Festival (Smisthonian, National Cathedral, Union Market,
~ Walter Reed & The Arc West, Washington, D.C.)
Bodies of Water, Site specific piece in the University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR
The Spaces Between #1, JCC, Foster City, CA, USA
The Spaces Between #2, PJCC, San Rafael, CA, USA
MTH! in Houston, at the City Hall & Brown Convention Center, Houston, TX
Towards One: Site specific, permanent piece in Building 98, Marfa, TX
2017
Be Here Now, Site specific, permanent piece in Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga, TN
MTH! in Hillary R. Clinton Library, Little Rock, AR
MTH! in Atlanta, at The Decatur Art Alliance, Decatur, GA
MTH! in Apopka, at the HCC, Apopka, FL
MTH! in Portsmouth, at Prescott Park & 3S Gallery, Portsmouth, NH
MTH! in Tel Aviv, Pilot for USA Tour at Beit Tami, Tel Aviv, Israel
Publications and Books
2022 Book, "Unravelling Women’s Art, by PL Henderson, Aurora Metro books, England
2018 Book, "Al camello camello y al amor amor" by Cristina Velásquez, NPOL, Colombia
2016 Book, "Wall, wall" by Dominque Lafon, France
2015 Book, "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
Press & selected articles: www.mayagelfman.com/press
Public collections
Historic Building 98. Marfa TX, USA
Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga TN, USA
Lettenmayer & partners, Czech Republic
MILU Art Hotel, Florence, Italy
Magdas Hotel, Vienna, Austria
Herzliya Municipal Library, Israel
* A list of private collections will be given upon request.
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