“Most artists in the world don’t want people to touch their art because it may ruin their pieces. This is how I’m different to other people in a surprising way. The element of connection is going to make more people come to see my art in the opening. I want to change viewers relationship to art in a memorable way.
For the Please Do Touch Series, I choose 5 of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and represented the good and the bad - what would happen if we completed the goals and what would happen if we didn’t.”
The Please Do Touch series of installations connect art, social issues, environmental topics and disability awareness. The installations are part of the Taking Action! UNESCO project that Yaniv Janson launched 5 years ago.
The installations focus on high priority themes which address the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yaniv is working on creating new art for this exhibition and plans to travel in New Zealand to consult with the disability community and so be able to integrate their ideas into his work. This would make this project the first collective one of its kind.
Art can facilitate the complex understanding between humankind and its environment through alternative languages involving all our senses. Please Do Touch installations make use of visual, body, oral and kinetic languages to speak to the variety of human experiences - to collaborate and work on humanity’s Sustainable Development Goals.
With the support from Creative New Zealand and the European Association of Service Providers for Disability (EASPD), Yaniv took the Please Do Touch installation for a solo exhibition in October 2017 in Paris at the Memoire de I'Avenir Gallery, and then to the EASPD Montenegro Conference and Europe-based projects supported by UNESCO.
With further support from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yaniv has taken the Please Do Touch installation to the United Nations headquarters in New York to accompany the 11th session of the Conference of State Parties, held in June 2018.