ABOUT US
CREATING ART CREATING CHANGE
LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW is a platform for creative opportunities for social change.
Having the Right to Art as a lighthouse, we at LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW are creating platforms for professional and community-based art initiatives. We developed a stage for Individuals and groups, specifically members pf minority groups, designed to vocalize their stories about Human Rights, Justice, Equality and Liberty.
Through creating art, we are creating a platform empowering individuals and minority groups to gain back their ability to be heard as loudly and as proudly as they wish, alongside with the opportunity to utilize that creative voice as a powerful engine to mend their own communities and lead for the betterment of the community as a whole.
COMPASS OF VALUES
LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW
views the arts and the culture
as having the ability
as well as the responsibility
for creating a just, equal, free, humane and accessible society
LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW
operates through
a humanistic standpoint
through which every person
is an artist creating his future
and every voice is an opportunity
for leading personal
and public positive change
LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW
will work to achieve its mission
while promoting all aspects of the Right to Art: the Right to Make Art, the Right for Freedom of Artistic Expression, the Right to Access Art ands the Right to Engage with Art.
For over a decade I've dedicated myself to the Law - both during my academic studying years at Tel Aviv University and as an attorney in the public service and the private sector. The concepts of Law and Justice have always had a gripping power over me. The Law, seeking to look at the world through dichotomies, matched my personal views: rights vs. obligations, guilt vs. innocence, authorities vs. liberties, the law vs. its breach. The Law offered a holistic perception of the world regarding the relationships between people and the relationships between them and the government. I have grown to acquire a love of the Law.
However, the deeper I got to know the Law, I found that there was something missing in that prima facie holistic appearance. Slowly, the sealed mirror of the Law cracked, and through the fractures I could see things that the Law couldn't represent. Those fractures were the works of art dealing with the Law, with Justice and with Human Rights - paintings, plays, movies and books. They presented me with the search for truth as it is: at times a worthy but idyllic striving and at times a foretold yet glorious failure. This revelation led my to devote my efforts, in research and in practice, to the core relationship of art and culture with law and with justice. I believe that in a world in which more and more relationships are being influenced by the law - it is the art and the culture which has the ability and which holds the responsibility to create circles of conversation dealing with justice, equality and liberty and to lead public, social and cultural positive change.
With this sense of responsibility I've founded LAPID CENTER FOR ART & LAW.
Kfir Lapid-Mashall
Founder
Kfir is a lawyer, an artist and an interdisciplinary researcher. Kfir studied his LL.B. in law and economics and his M/a. in Interdisciplinary Arts at Tel Aviv University. His recent academic research is titled: "Representation of Representation: the Lawyer in the Theatre and the Search of Truth". Kfir is a social activist as well as an educator of Law and Theatre in the Tel Aviv Youth University and accompanies the workshop course "Directing with Court Protocols" in the Department of Theatre Arts at the university.
Kfir lives in Tel Aviv with his husband and creative partner, Yuval Zehavi, a theatre director, producer and video editor.