בתיה הולין

חלום. שבר.

בתיה הולין, ההולכת בשבילים, סיפור החיים בעוטף עזה

מבעד לעדשת המצלמה.

חיים של אופטימיות, תקווה, בניית בית וקהילה,

שנים של רקימת החלום הסתיימו באבחה חדה אחת

בבוקרו של השבעה באוקטובר.

Dream. Fracture

Batia Holin, who walks the paths.

The story of life in the Gaza Envelope through the lens of the camera.

A life of optimism, hope, building a home and community,

Years of embroidering the dream that ended with one sharp blow

On the morning of the seventh of October.

Armed, but with camera?

1. Is there someone on the other side
doing what I do?

On my morning walks I always felt the neighbors across the fence (in total we are 500 meters from each other).

I have always wondered if there is anyone on the other side who does the same. I submitted an application for the "Gershoni Foundation" scholarship of the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council and to my great joy I won the scholarship, so I decided to present an exhibition of my photographs. When I started thinking about the exhibition, I realized that it had to be bigger than just my photos. I saw an opportunity to present life on both sides of the fence.

2. Anonymous partner

I turned to the big world with the help of a Facebook group dealing with life on the border of the Gaza Strip. I received several inquiries from photographers from Gaza and in the end, there was one photographer who kept in touch with me. I asked him if it wasn't too dangerous for him, wasn't he scared? He said he is aware of the danger but must continue because he has no future in Gaza, and he wants something from him to reach the big world. According to him, it was important to him that people know that not everyone is a terrorist in the Gaza Strip, that there are people who want to live in peace and quiet. As I was afraid to take responsibility for his life, I conditioned our continued cooperation on the condition that he remain anonymous and his details be confidential. He agreed, and in the exhibition he appears under the name "Mahmoud".

3. Between Us

Finally, the "Between Us" exhibition creamed skin and sinews. The exhibition brought together four artists - Me (Batia), Silit,

a fellow poet from Kibbutz Sa'ad, and Mahmoud - all of us documented the routine in the place where we wake up every morning to a reality that cannot be predicted in advance.

the curator of the exhibition, Moshe Ash, put everything together into one special work.

I shared through the photos the experience of the daily march on the road that surrounds the kibbutz, near the security fence. Mahmoud's photographs revealed the routine that takes place on the other side of the fence. Silit's poems connected our images to the earth, to the wonders of nature and faith, from a questioning and researching point of view.

4. Dream

The exhibition was presented in the Kibbutz Nahal Oz gallery, where the photos were hung without mentioning who took which photo. The idea was that people would look at the pictures without prejudices, with eyes free of stigmas. Over ten thousand people visited the exhibition and it was a great success. The exhibition made me feel that there is a chance that two simple people, devoid of politics, can perhaps grow something good in the area.

During the exhibition, Mahmoud and I were in frequent contact.

I sent him sympathetic responses from people who watched the exhibition, were impressed, were interested and asked questions and were also "infected" with the optimism that something good can happen.

From March 2023, the connection between me and Mahmoud was cut off.

5. Fracture

On October 7th, we woke up at 6:29 AM to the sounds of rocket launches and alarms. We realized that we need to enter the safe room.

While moving, I looked in the kitchen window and there I saw five men dressed in black with white ribbons on their heads, standing at the front door of my house, and I heard them shouting in Arabic. We continued running to the safe room, luckily they had their backs to us and we managed to escape. They decided not to enter our house and that's how we survived.

My husband and I continued to sit in the safe room while constantly hearing crazy fights outside. At 10 AM I received a phone call from an unknown Israeli number. I heard someone speaking to me in English with a heavy Arabic accent and I realized that it was my partner for the exhibition, Mahmoud. He started asking me a lot of questions - Mainly about our army, about the soldiers and their movements. At this point I realized that his questions were wrong, and it was time to end the conversation.

6. Dream. Fracture

Only after a few days when I started to process everything that happened,

I began to understand that my partner for the exhibition was one of the terrorists in Gaza, who actually tried to murder me and my family on October 7th.

I felt deeply broken. I felt that everything I had believed in for the past fifty years had been shattered into pieces.

I was left without words and without air in my body.

The artistic work, discourse and creation give me inspiration and strength to deal with life in the shadow of the war and the big fracture.

This is where the new exhibition - was born.

Dream . Fracture .