‘Sense of closure’: NY Jews deposit hostage tags into new art installation on Oct. 7

NEW YORK — When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli street artists Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz, in New York City for an art residency, decided to put their skills to use by designing posters showing the hostages taken into Gaza.

The posters became a global phenomenon as activists printed out the fliers and pasted them onto city streets in New York, across the US and in other countries.

On Wednesday, the third anniversary of the attack, Mintz and Bandaid unveiled a sculpture in New York meant to commemorate the fight for the hostages’ release, ending a journey that began at the start of the war.

The plight of the hostages was a central focus of the New York Jewish community until their release last year.

“People should feel very proud that they contributed and did everything they could,” Mintz told The Times of Israel. “They should feel that they are powerful. The battle isn’t over but people deserve a moment of gratitude after such a long battle.”

The sculpture was unveiled at an October 7 memorial event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a Holocaust education center, in lower Manhattan.

New York leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul and City Council Speaker Julie Menin, attended the event, a solemn commemoration led by the Jewish community as anti-Zionist protests raged elsewhere in the city.

The UJA-Federation of New York, a leading Jewish group in the city and the event organizer, commissioned Mintz and Bandaid to design the sculpture.

The six-foot-tall acrylic tree-trunk structure, titled, “Rooted: A Testament to Jewish Resilience,” has a hollow center filled with the dog tags and yellow pins that were worn by hostage advocates.

Mintz and Bandaid said they were inspired to design a container that would serve as a portable memorial for Jews to deposit the items they had worn for over two years, until the hostages’ release. The tree symbolizes unity and the efforts of the Jewish community coming together to bring the hostages home, they said.

At the unveiling, guests perused the installation and dropped their hostage tags and pins into the center of the clear tree trunk.

New York City resident Lynn Wolitzer said the installation was an important commemoration to the challenges the Jewish community faced after October 7.

“It gives a very sad time that has passed a living, breathing future,” Wolitzer said.

Another attendee, Andrea Resnick, said that the physical act of removing her tags and pins after two years had been difficult, as the items had become a part of her.

“It felt like a connection point to our brothers and sisters in Israel,” Resnick said. “Also relief. It feels like a sense of closure.”

Shlomi Rabi, the founder and executive director of the Brooklyn-based organization Bridgewell Arts, curated the installation. Bridgewell Arts focuses on building connections between the art world and Jewish creatives.

The acrylic tree was cast by Mitch Meisner, the second-generation owner of Meisner Art Casting on Long Island. The Meisners are close friends with the family of Omer Neutra, an American-Israeli soldier killed in the October 7 attack.

Inside the sculpture, nestled among the tags and yellow hostage ribbons, was a photo of Kfir Bibas, a baby boy taken captive during the Hamas attack who was murdered in Gaza along with his mother and toddler brother.

Mintz and Bandaid are the parents of a five-month-old girl. They said the images of children on the hostage posters, especially Bibas, who was nine months old when he was kidnapped, affected them deeply as new parents.

“I have the Hamas footage in my head. I can throw up from horror,” Mintz said. “It was personal, but I was not yet a mother. I did not understand the magnitude of how it felt — the sheer horror that you get to hold a baby and for that baby to be taken away by terrorists.”

Speakers at the event included Hochul, Menin, Mark Treyger, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and the former hostage Andrei Kozlov, an artist who was held captive for 246 days.

Attendees included US Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, who is Jewish, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, and other elected leaders from the state and city.

Menin, the city council’s first Jewish speaker, took an apparent swipe at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose October 7 statement issued earlier in the day had infuriated Jewish leaders.

Mamdani mourned those killed in the Hamas attack and condemned the terror group, but the bulk of his statement attacked Israel, accusing the Jewish state of genocide, war crimes and apartheid.

“Today should be a day about only one thing: honoring and remembering the 1,200 people who were murdered by Hamas terrorists,” Menin said. “That’s what October 7 is about — 251 hostages taken, families torn asunder, and the Jewish community, both in Israel and here in New York City, that is grieving.”

“To say anything but that is not okay,” Menin said, to a standing ovation. “People need to recognize the pain the Jewish community here in New York City is feeling.”

The sculpture will be on display at the museum through October 26, and after that, will be installed at the UJA-Federation of New York offices in midtown Manhattan.

Bandaid and Mintz said they hope non-Jews will also see the exhibit to learn about October 7.

“Even if you don’t know the history or don’t know enough, you need to know it happened,” Bandaid said. “I don’t think as a community or as a country that the circle is closed. We are not over it.”