Mind the Heart! (est. 2009) is a collaborative public-art project by artists Maya Gelfman & Roie Avidan.
In the past decade, the project has reached more than 100 cities across 5 continents:
from New York to Bangkok, Delhi to London, from the Israel National Museum and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.
to orphanages in Kenya and Uganda.
The project works at the intersection of art and social awareness.
It engages the public domain with the aim of getting both the artists and the audiences to be fully present, to ‘be here now’.
This is achieved through tangible street-art but expands on that across mediums and disciplines,
to temporary installations in the wild, performances, poetry and public actions.
The works are made with soft materials that clash with the concrete jungle.
They deal with the power of choice, the cyclical nature of things, acknowledging wounds in order to heal, and interconnectedness.
Back in 2009, searching for ways to facilitate a direct connection to their surroundings,
The artists stepped outside the galleries and museums and into the streets.
While their practice also results in tangible “creations” – installations, murals and photography – it is performative in essence.
The artists’ aim is be informed by a specific moment, reflecting the fleeting influence of a place, time and of the people there.
In 2017 Gelfman & Avidan took this approach even further and embarked on a new artistic endeavor,
a 365/24/7 performance called The Serendipity Experiment. The premise was to accept the unknown as an artistic tool,
by committing fully to relinquishing control. For this purpose, they donated all their belongings, moved to live in a van in a foreign country,
and asked strangers to dictate their route, schedule, and next encounters. At each point they were sent to,
they created public works that reflected each specific place, time, and experience. The experiment was planned to last one year
but 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.
* Click here to see a cv and selected list of partners.
