ACTIVISM

Nitzan Mintz & Dede Bandaid

Artists

Street artists Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid have been displaying their innovative creations on the boulevards and avenues of Tel Aviv since 2006. Arriving in New York in September 2023 to take up a residency, the pair found themselves thousands of miles from home as the news spread on Oct. 7 of the brutal Hamas pogrom in the south of Israel. This experience fueled The Kidnapped From Israel Project, with Mintz and Bandaid designing the iconic posters showing the names and faces of the more than 250 hostages abducted to Gaza by the Hamas terrorists. "We received cruel comments from people. 'Why are you posting these? Those people are killed anyway.' People did not want to know," Mintz recalled, while Bandaid revealed that the two of them "were completely broken, we had no friends to help us." Yet in less than 48 hours, the artists received photos from all over the world, translating their posters into 33 different languages. "When people put up posters, you feel like you have family. Our community cannot be silenced. We have to do something," Mintz said.