On Jaffa Road in the heart of Jerusalem, Fragments, an art exhibition by Eliyah Goldwicht, Chava Bash, Chaya Vance, and Raquel Sanchez, with poetry by Lynne Robinson, spoke to the heartache, pain, and resilience of the Jewish people, providing a sense of comfort and understanding to all those affected by the trauma of war.
The one-day exhibition was curated by Goldwicht to tell a story not only of heartache and pain but also of growth and healing. The exhibition room had two paths: a path that depicted the constant background pain experienced since Oct. 7, and a path that focused on distinct moments when the pain flares up, specific heartache, specific anguish. However, the entrance of the exhibition was where the story began.
The journals
The entrance to the show had a display of paintings by Vance, which she painted as a form of journaling post-Oct. 7, expressing her emotions through visual artistry. Separately, her friend Robinson wrote a series of poems about her feelings after Oct. 7 and during the war.
The poems are deeply moving, speaking to pain, desperation, and longing; her poem “Rivers” highlights the feeling of despair and hopelessness that is prevalent in a lot of these pieces. The lines “Forever this grief / Devolved / Into horror / Beyond our belief” gracefully summarize the poignant emotions throughout the exhibition.
Vance’s paintings were mostly abstract, using color and form to convey meaning. The paintings often felt angry and resentful: the colors bright, and the shapes crude. Vance was able to evoke emotion through the abstract, seemingly running headfirst into pain, hoping to get past the sense of feeling “paralyzed in terms of creating art,” as she told In Jerusalem.
The poems and paintings didn’t feel completely in sync with each other. Often, we found the poem misled or confused our understanding of the paintings. In an interview, Vance told us that the poems and journal-paintings were created separately and fitted together by Robinson after the fact, possibly explaining the sense of incongruence that was sometimes felt.
The paths to healing
The paintings of specific moments were show stoppers. One of the pieces by Goldwicht, titled Dancing in Hell, depicts a ballerina in a flowing pink dress, with the occasional blood-red streak, perhaps symbolizing the suffering that comes hand in hand with the act of survival. The dancer is engulfed in a sea of gray, black, and dark blue, as blurry figures seem to retreat into the background.
While we were looking at the painting, a friend of Goldwicht approached us and related the story behind the art. He and Goldwicht had been sitting on the couch reading The Choice by Edith Eger, a book about a woman’s experience in the Holocaust, when they read a scene about a ballerina who was forced by a Nazi to dance until her feet were bleeding, which the book described as “dancing in hell.” In that instant, Goldwicht put the book down, got up, and without a word sketched a brief outline of the painting.
The piece embodies a central theme seen throughout the exhibition: the tension between the urge to “keep dancing” and the need to honor grief and heartbreak.
To the right of this piece was another quite emotional painting, titled Bar, by Chava Bash. The piece depicts recently released Israeli hostage Bar Kupershtein wrapped in tefillin, dressed in military uniform, and reading from a siddur. Kupershtein was working as a paramedic when Hamas attacked the Supernova music festival. Instead of fleeing, he stayed to help the wounded. He was kidnapped and taken hostage, and was finally released this past Monday.
When asked about the painting and its significance, Bash spoke about the importance of finding optimism and maintaining hope in the face of hardship. She said that when she was painting the piece, she felt like she was “manifesting that he would see it.” She said that the painting “represents where we are right now,” focusing on the present, the positive rather than the past.
In the wake of Kupershtein’s return, Bash feels that the painting holds even more importance and meaning. It turned from a symbol of hope to a “celebration of return and resilience.”
The other path to healing was represented by abstract paintings done by Vance. The four paintings are infused with the inescapable pain and anguish felt by many throughout the war.
When asked about the paintings, Vance emphasized the connection she felt to Tears of Bibas, a piece she painted after attending a live stream of the Bibas family’s funeral. During the funeral, she was overcome with emotion “for the father, who was just released to discover that his wife and children were not in the world.”
She said that she felt “there had to be some hope in this,” but that in this particular piece, those tears, represented by black streaks dripping down the painting, represent “their tears, his tears, and [her] tears.”
The paths met in the middle, at the light paintings. Painted by Sanchez, these use lighter, calmer colors: reds, yellows, browns. The three light paintings felt like a breath of fresh air. Although they are abstract and don’t show any distinct healing or happiness, they left a more peaceful impression than either path. They represented hope for the future, the “day after.”
Honoring tragedy
The final section of the Fragments exhibition was made up of memorial pieces, paintings that showed the artists’ personal involvements and connections. These were extremely touching.
One of them depicts David Newman, the artist’s neighbor, who was killed on Oct. 7.
Another shows a soldier with PTSD smoking in front of the rubble, with his face completely blurred and obscured by smoke and clouds, stripped of his identity. Meant to represent the many soldiers who, since the start of the war, had lost their lives to suicide, the painting evoked deep pain and sadness that call attention to the struggle behind combat.
A third, Red Was the Last Color, shows a red couple dancing in a black world. They carefully hold on to each other as the man’s soul appears to be pulled upward, away from his chest.
Each piece in the exhibition depicted pain or desperation unique to the artist and the observer, somehow communicating individual experiences while also addressing how the sadness and pain are a shared experience, which created a sense of camaraderie and reminded viewers that they were not alone in their feelings.
The beauty came from the emotions the paintings evoked, and the sense of community, hope, and resilience they inspired.
The exhibition took place on October 9, the day that the deal for the return of the remaining hostages was agreed upon, making the artwork feel all the more powerful.