Ran Sahar is CEO of Maccabi, israel’s leading HMO, certainly a very busy man. But Mr. Sahar deemed it important to take time off from his crowded schedule to visit Ezer Mizion’s 2020 Art Exhibit. The annual exhibit features work produced by the participants of the Art Workshop, one of the many programs of Ezer Mizion’s Cancer Support Division.
Under the able leadership of Ms. Lidia Rozanski, Multidisciplinary Visual Artist, Certified Art Therapist, participants are guided to explore their inner feelings and express them through visual art. The process that the workshop participants undergo, alone and together through this project, is unique and powerful with a significant impact on their battle with cancer.
This project, an expanse for emotional processing, offers the artists an opportunity to open up and cope and to break the stifling secrecy, while engaging in the process of creating an artistic object and exhibiting it. It enables them to set out on an internal journey that is emotionally, creatively, and practically challenging. This journey demands of the participants to leave their comfort zone for the sake of the change that is generated by the new perspective they acquire in the course of the process.
When a person is sick, he can experience depression, anxiety, disappointment, frustration, and fear. He can lose his life routine and his ability to create. This workshop provides participants with a place of belonging and identification, a place where they can find change through which they can restore respect – both for themselves and for those around them. Via the process of artistic creation, we try to restore to participants their strength and their ability to do, to create, and to accomplish in the present and to plan for the future.
The artistic works created by participants in the workshop and displayed at this exhibit reveal a little bit of this process and open a window to the world of people fighting cancer. Ofir Amitay uses the following text to illustrate her creation.
Together Hand in Hand
How supportive can hands be?
To a child whose life has only just begun..
How supportive and strengthening can a family be?
Apparently, more than I could ever have thought.
Like the foundations of a building, strong and steadfast in the face of a storm,
Like the net for the fallen trapeze artist, flexible, soft, holding on, not letting go.
Hands so powerful, endlessly strengthening.
Where would I have been without you, my dear family?
Probably not among the living.. and thus, this exhibition
Is yours as it is mine.
Together, hand in hand, forever.
To view exhibit: https://ezermizion.org/pdfs/Art_Exhibit_2020.pdf
