Biography
Maya Gelfman
Born in 1978 to a family of immigrants that had fled from Moldova (at the time, the USSR) to Israel.
She has been a nomad since 2017. It’s both a life-choice 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.
From painting to installation, performance to street-art, she uses the body to investigate transformation, fragility, resilience,
beauty and decay. Her practice is deliberately spontaneous. Without a predetermined narrative, each work evolves in direct response to the environment. In a process that entails total immersion, 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. In this slow, performative process she serves as an observer and a participant.
Her aproach 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 at age four
and the long recovery that followed instilled in her an embodied understanding of impermanence.
It fueled the urgency and totality with which she creates today.
Since graduating with a BA from Shenkar Art Academy (2006), Gelfman’s work has exhibited extensively.
With eleven solo exhibition under her belt and dozens of group shows, including at 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, Miami, and Washington D.C.
She participated in six residencies including SAPH (China) and Windgate (USA), and was shortlisted for the Halcyon Fellowship
(2019). Her work was published in the media, in international art-books (in London, Germany, france, Colombia and USA),
and can be found in private and public collections, including Lettenmayer & partners, Rivka Saker, Swatch Art Peace Hotel,
Zuckerman Museum of Art, Creative Discovery Museum, Historic Building 98, Milu Hotel.
Beyond institutional spaces, she co-founded 'Mind the Heart!' (2009), a street-art project that has reached over 100 cities globally.
In 2013, she gave a TEDx talk on her intentional practice. In 2017, inspired by fluxes and improv theory, she created The Serendipity Experiment, a public performance spanning four years and 100,000 km across North America.
Artist statement | Creating out of not knowing
I am a multidisciplinary artist working with site- and time-specific processes.
Through the body, I investigate impermanence, fragility, resilience, beauty, and decay.
Each work becomes a "snapshot" of a place, a moment, and myself situated within it — both as an observer and participant.
The paintings presented here are part of a larger, ongoing series created over the past four years, across Italy, France, and China.
While each piece stands independently, articulating a singular experience, together they weave a broader framework —
a mindset, a living archive of movement and transformation.
My practice is deliberately spontaneous. Without a predetermined narrative, each work evolves in direct response to the environment. Using somatic tools, I engage with the sensory field around me: 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.
This process draws inspiration from Fluxus, action painting, improvisation theory, and years of meditation, yet its roots are deeply personal. A near-death experience during open-heart surgery at the age of four, and the long healing journey that followed,
instilled in me an embodied understanding of impermanence. It is from this urgency, this totality of being, that I create.
Through intentional immersion, I move beyond habitual boundaries. The edges between self and environment become porous.
In that liminal space, the friction between internal and external landscapes can be investigated — revealing pathways toward connection, balance, agency, and release.
My movement across mediums and contexts, from painting to performance, installation to street art, stems from the same search for symbiosis. Embracing an artist-nomad existence, I follow the winding path of the work itself.
The shifting between studio and public space exercises the muscles of engagement: of taking in, of putting myself out there.
It reminds me that stories — those I hear and those I tell — are not fixed, but fluid, evolving with place, people, knowledge, and awareness. It reminds me that life expresses itself in myriad forms. It is through this uncertainty that I find both solace and hope.
* * *
Technique & Breakdown of series over the years
My technique is mixed-media. I integrate fine-art and industrial materials and tools:
From tools typically used for building walls or floor tiles, to soft watercolor brushes, pallet knives, print rollers and metal scrapers.
Acrylic paints, inks and markers are mixed with various mediums such as glazing liquid, conditioner and silicone oil,
substances that impact the behavior of the pigments in unexpected ways. In the streets, I use hand cut letters and elements made with yarn, fabric, treated foam and duct-tape.
Early works:
In my time as a student, the early works ("Red Heart", 2007/8 and 2009) were naïve, minimalistic drawings.
Bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Figures floating in white spaces.
After graduating and over time, extra layers appeared ("Illusions & Reality", 2010-2012 and 2013),
representing the struggle to grow and resolve past, present and future.
In these formative years, I practiced a slow Sisyphean process in which every piece took months. Then a change took place,
and my practice shifted into a quick, dance-like ritual. ("Release", 2014-2016). These paintings were done in one continuous session, each session lasting between a day to three days of constant work, stopping only for food and short stints of sleep.
The Serendipity Experiment 2017-2021
Between 2017 to 2021 I was immersed in an experimental performance, together with my partner in Mind The Heart! Project.
Our premise was to accept the unknown as an artistic tool, by committing fully to relinquishing control.
We followed the first rule of Improv theater - SAY YES. For this purpose, we donated all our belongings, moved to live in a van
in a foreign country, and invited strangers to dictate our route, schedule, and next encounters. At each point we were sent to, we created public works, daily. What was planned for one year ended up lasting four, spanning more than 60,000 miles (100,000 km) in 48 states across the U.S.A. as well as other countries.
The Unimaginable Horizon 2021-2024 (and ongoing)
Living on the road for four years (of which two in the pandemic), while committing to the totality which the performance necessitated, heralded another big shift in my process. Returning to a normative studio setting in late 2021 uncovered the tantalizing realization that previous inspirations and techniques now felt irrelevant. I couldn’t just pick up from where I left off.
The journey had fundamentally changed the way I perceived stability, home, possessions, necessity.
It altered the way I lived and subsequently, the way I created.
It felt crucial to allow the full breadth of my experiences to manifest directly onto the canvas, and these experiences were
too expansive to fit into figurative works, such as the ones I created before. My previous areas of research,
such as archetypes and mythologies, felt more like crutches than points of reference.
Free from the need to adhere to one "coherent" idea or to convey a comprehensible image,
an uninhibited expression was unleashed and with it, a flood of intuitive works.
Since 2021 I’ve painted over fifty abstract paintings. They represent a form of cartography –
to places familiar and unknown, to blocked paths and to new roads.
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
Group Exhibitions
2024
Twenty Four Windows, Fifth Floor Gallery, SAPH, Shanghai, China
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
Mind the Heart, The Container, Tel Aviv, Israel
Sea Breeze, Artist Residency, Bat Yam, Israel
On the Fence #2, Jaffa, Israel
Mind the Heart, 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
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
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
>> back to Home