Dede and Nitzan Mintz: Out of Place

Dede and Nitzan Mintz: Out of Place

Dede's activity as a street artist spans over a decade, and his works are exhibited in galleries and museums. He draws inspiration from the pulse of the cityscape – architecture, rhythms, voices, and passers-by. He is motivated by a desire to leave his own mark on the city, which has become an integral part of his work. Nitzan Mintz, Dede's partner and a street artist herself, writes prose and poetry. Once her written creations are polished and perfected, she chooses the appropriate graphic arrangement and sets out to find the ideal location for them.

Dede's and Mintz's joint projects invoke an evolving urban fabric and examine urban processes of growth, destruction, and renewal. They invite the viewer to contemplate the relationship between the individual and the societal as reflected in the urban space. Out of Place is an ongoing collaborative effort that plays out in the streets of Tel Aviv.

Dede works mainly in south Tel Aviv, where his drawings of wooden animals in mid-fight, flight, or while hunting adorn the sides of buildings and sheds. In this project, paintings of wood scraps and demolished objects come together to form giant birds – recalling the days when Dede worked in the gentrifying Yad Harutsim neighborhood, where homeless people built transient shelters out of furniture scraps. Hanging across a long hallway in the museum, giant birds spread their wings, yearning to fly.

Mintz, Israel's first street poet, uses paint brushes, markers, or stencils to draw her poems on the walls of Tel Aviv's Kiryat HaMel'acha compound. Her poems express harsh criticism of the art world's indifference to occurrences in its own "back yard." During the day, artists and intellectuals gather in the neighborhood's top floors, while at night the area becomes a hub of prostitution.

The decision to relocate Dede's giant birds and Mintz's texts from the streets of Tel Aviv to a museum exhibition space is an act of protest against the art world's conservative attitude toward the urban neighborhood. Whether consciously or not, the art world sees the urban neighborhood as a possession, transforming it into an imagined location. Art magazines, museums and galleries, and even mainstream media manipulate the neighborhood and exploit it for self-promotion, using it as a mouthpiece for the preeminent neo-liberal ideology.

This ideology sanctifies personal freedom and defines the neighborhood as a place of liberation that offers the "choice to be yourself." However, can anyone really choose? Presenting the neighborhood as a site of free choice reflects a disregard for those lacking choice and opportunity. The limitations imposed on the life of its residents are not the result of emotional oppression but of powerful financial forces exercised against them. The collaboration between Dede and Mintz points to the painful fact that interest in the poor is limited to a fascination with aesthetics, while poverty itself remains out of sight. In this case, artistic practices contribute to the gentrification process and brand the appearance of poverty and homelessness in a neat package of aesthetic pleasure.