Linking Attacks - Adi Eliel Leshem
- erez weiner
- Feb 2
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 19
The text’s title is a reversal of Wilfred Bion’s “Attacks on Linking.” In his essay, Bion addresses a situation in which the mind withholds a destructive internal object, one that goes against any possibility of linking.
In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine’s territories and started a war. Following the war, many refugees came to Israel. In reaction to that, “Yahat”, the Creative & Expressive Arts Therapies Association in Israel, has established several projects. Among them was the “Studio Batuach” (“Safe Studio”) project, an initial service center for emotional aid.
Safe studios have opened in several places around Israel, including the one at Nordia Hostel, which I coordinated. Refugees came to this hostel straight from the airport, and they were invited to the safe studio. We mainly received children who were either accompanied by their parents or occasionally arrived alone.
One morning, while I was walking around the hostel before the studio opened, I saw dolls lying around, abandoned, in various places. I imagined them as the dolls that were abandoned in Ukraine by the children who were escaping. I also likened them to the children who came to the hostel from Ukraine: children who were in a kind of limbo, neither here nor there. They were no longer in their old home and not yet in their new home. They were no longer Ukrainians and not yet Israelis. They were “in-between”, abandoned, detached. I decided to document these dolls, commemorate them, make them present, and give them a place.
The encounter with the war between Russia and Ukraine and the refugees, children among them, was difficult for me. Yet it felt distant—this wasn’t happening here; it wasn’t our war. This feeling of distance has made coping with the situation possible for me, and I was able to withstand it.
The October 7th massacre, on the other hand, lacked shape and definition. It was unbearable.
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas members broke into Israel’s territories. They slaughtered, murdered, raped, burned, and kidnapped citizens at a distance of about 100 kilometers from my home. My feelings following the event were so intense, it felt as though words could not describe it, neither words in the Hebrew language nor words in any other language.
In the absence of words, the language of art materials has unlocked a door to a brand new world, a place where I could express some of what I was going through and provide an outlet to the emotional storm that was roaring within me.
During those days, most of the artworks were created using the “ready-made” technique, a technique in which one connects all kinds of objects and materials that are available. These materials were within a hand’s reach, materials one could effortlessly gather and work with.
This technique allowed me to engage in profound work, even when my body and mind were exhausted.
“Cleared for publication.” This word combination has become more and more common the longer the war has continued.
On Hannukah Eve, 2023, “it was cleared for publication that nine soldiers were killed in battle in Gaza.”
One of the strongest feelings that has accompanied me, back then as well as today, is the feeling that humans were not the only ones kidnapped in this war. Symbols, ideas, wishes, and hopes were also abducted.
The strongest experience to have accompanied me since October 7th, the day The Iron Swords war began, is that the attack was happening on two realities simultaneously—the external and the internal—and they are still under attack.
Outside, it is men, women, and children. Houses, communities, and possessions are under attack. Inside, it is peace of mind, security, trust, hopes, dreams, and joy.
As a reaction to this feeling, I found myself creating mainly digital collages. First, they were collages that integrated my own photographic work, and later on, they were photographs that integrated my own drawing. Creating these collages was my way of piecing together and assembling experiences and symbols from these two realities that were under attack and creating a new reality, one that withholds the pain and the destruction and also the growth and creation that happen alongside them.
This was linking attacks together. This was Linking attacks.
Linking attacks.
In this picture, one can see a swan that I photographed some years ago. I embedded the red everlasting flower in the collage, a flower which in Israeli society is strongly associated with bereavement.
I felt an urge to keep embedding it, again and again and again, much like the bereavement routine, the pulsation of losses: one loss, then another, then another.
Then, the swan began to sail on the river of bereavement.
And who is this swan? Perhaps it can be any of us during these days. Sailing between the abyss and the heavens, breathing deeply between one pulsation and another.
The following artworks deal with the aftermath of the war.
There was something about my encounter with the survivors of the October 7th massacre that required me to aim my gaze toward the horizon so I could stay hopeful. This was possible thanks to the processing work I have done in the previous months using art.
In the days after the war, that’s how I envision it: the “new world” will emerge. In the new world, things will be sharper, clearer, brighter. The pain will be particularly intense, the flowers will bloom in the strongest of colors, and the sunsets will glow deeper than usual.
Have you ever seen the sunset glowing that way?
“A List for the Day After the War”, Adi Eliel Leshem, ready-made, military canteen, hibiscus flower, 2023.
A list for the days after the war:
Empty the canteen
Polish it and clean it of blood stains.
Clean it from Gazan dust.
Ventilate it and keep the smells of war away.
Wait for the smoke to dissolve.
Fill it with pure groundwater.
Put a living flower inside it.
Breathe deeply.
These works, and the texts that accompany them, are testimonies. These are essays on attacks, linking attacks together. An external reality was under attack in the most extreme way possible: slaughter, murder, rape, destruction, kidnapping, and burning. Following this attack, the internal reality was also under attack, with fear, hopelessness, despair, anger, worry, and pain prevailing.
This is a testimony to the process of linking together different parts of the soul that were under attack and who were now attached, piece by piece, to create the most glowing sunset, the prettiest and the saddest one.
“How pretty the sunset is to a sad heart.” Yehonatan Geffen.
About the author:
Adi Eliel Leshem is an art therapist (M.A), Jungian psychotherapist, and a creator.
She is a lecturer in “Seminar Hakibbutzim”, instructing (Yahat) students and therapists. She is currently working with women and teenagers, and in the past she has worked with children and youth at risk and/or children after hospitalization, and refugees. She is the developer and the photographer of the “Makom” (Place) card pack.
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