In Spite of Our Pledges (A Collective Heartbreak)

Israeli artist Know Hope’s body of work takes a multitude of forms, including murals, site-specific installations, mixed media, text and photography. In a bid to incite thought-provoking parallels between the political and emotional declarations that haunt our times, Know Hope uses public spaces as a conduit to relay dislocated yet intimate statements that arrest the viewer’s everyday motion. “A Collective Heartbreak” is a series of pieces Know Hope presented for Nuart 2017. Scattered across the city, in sometimes hard-to-reach locations, each one holds a message that most viewers can relate to in an abstract yet oddly intimate way. In speaking to the citizens of Stavanger, Know Hope collected shared stories of heartbreak, from which he sourced his messages. Each statement allows the viewer to recall their own aligned experience. The emotional weight it left ultimately reminds us that we are never without hope, even when experiencing profound loss.