Turning ancestral pain into paintings of peace

For Sydney artist Wendy Bookatz, art has always been a way of both confronting pain and of seeking light within it. Her upcoming exhibition, Women, Pogroms, Love, is both a personal act of remembrance and a collective call for compassion.

Bookatz’s latest body of work traces the legacy of her great-aunt Sarah Chaya Krikst, who was brutally murdered during the pogroms in Lithuania.

“My exhibition is in loving memory of Sarah Chaya Krikst. I am Wendy Chaya. I am named after her,” Bookatz told The AJN.

It was only through her son’s school project in 2005 that she learned of the atrocity that had haunted her family’s past.

“I did not know about this earth-shattering event before Sam interviewed my aunt,” she said. “When my mother’s sister was just a girl, 16 or 17, she worked for a seamstress… In the middle of the night, Cossacks attacked and raided the house. They raped and murdered Sarah Chaya and then burned the house down.”

The story, which had been buried for generations, became a turning point for Bookatz.

“Much of the history of Lithuanian Jews was erased or left untold,” she reflected. Through her art, she seeks to reclaim those silenced voices, particularly those of the women who suffered and were forgotten.

Her painting May Her Memory Be a Blessing imagines Sarah Chaya “in shamayim, heaven,” Bookatz explained. “Although she is enveloped in light and peace, she sits amongst the other tens of thousands of Jewish women murdered in the pogroms. The red blotches signify blood, the murdered bodies are black. Chaya means ‘of light and love’ in Yiddish, and I am hoping that the feeling of light and love, her presence painted in white, dims the darkness of murder and blood. I’m trying to make meaning from the sorrow of her loss.”

Bookatz’s recent works mark a deliberate shift from darkness to light. She explained that it was her cousin who called her out on the “devastatingly sad” artworks she used to create. It was the turning point for her change to painting ‘love’.

That transition is reflected in the exhibition’s title, Women, Pogroms, Love, which intertwines themes of violence, grief, and resilience. Alongside her works about Sarah Chaya and violence against women, the exhibition also features portraits such as her painting of Francine Lazarus, a Holocaust survivor and author of A Hidden Jewish Child from Belgium.

“The last few years have, for me, been particularly difficult,” Bookatz said. “Through this exhibition I have tried to turn loss into witness and light. Leonard Cohen’s words frame the exhibition “I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere”, she continued, inviting the public to view the exhibition.

“Come and stand with me in this space of grief, memory and love.”

Women, Pogroms, Love opens Sunday, November 2 at 3pm, with writer and arts advocate Sylvia Hrovatin officially opening the exhibition. For more information, visit wendylessickgallery.com