FOR months Sofie Berzon MacKie was too traumatised to think about art. An award-winning visual artist, who also ran the art gallery on Kibbutz Be’eri where she’d lived most of her life, everything felt far too broken.
Her friends had been murdered or taken hostage, she’d endured nearly 24 hours of terror in her home on the kibbutz as it was invaded by Hamas terrorists, her three children wouldn’t stop clinging to her, the art gallery had been burnt to the ground and she was living in a cramped hotel room.
Renewal theme: frame from Sofie Berzon MacKie's Lighthouse series
The trauma is still there, of course. It is an ongoing thing. But it is apt that the first art she has been able to produce is a collection called Lighthouse.
It is beautiful and complex art – seven small collages which make up a stunning whole – which she calls “the most important work I ever made in my life”.
“It is a bit embarrassing. It has been almost a year and this is all I’ve managed,” says Sofie, whose British mother met her Israeli father while volunteering on Be’eri. “But sometimes it is not about quantity but the quality and meaning things have.
“The series is inspired by nature – the idea of a big bang and how life can start again.
“The most obvious part is obviously what happened on the kibbutz – the people who were murdered – but it is also how an event like October 7 means your whole identity falls apart too,” says Sofie, 40. “You have to reconsider your thoughts about right and wrong, good and bad, what makes people human, morals.
From the Lighthouse series
“So many things that were the backbone of your identity become kind of irrelevant after something like that. The series is about how you have to start rebuilding while we are still living in this never-ending disaster.”
The Lighthouse collection has at the centre of it a lamppost from the kibbutz and the wild creatures of the Negev. “Some of the things look like small stars in a very dark sky – they are like fragments of myself after everything fell apart – these fragments are trying to reconnect after this big explosion. I think one idea that I am exploring is that new worlds can be born – and there is potential for growing new life after massive destruction.”
It is also key for her to reclaim the Kibbutz Be’eri story. “In the early days there were some exhibitions in very bad taste – showing explicit photographs from the kibbutz,” she says. “A lot of books were being written and none of them were from the survivors about what happened. I think for those of us who went through it, we needed time to understand, reflect, be able to arrange our thoughts, our emotions so that we could bring forward something that is true and authentic. It is one thing for people who still have the studio standing – they have the time and they are looking at us from the outside. But what they feel may be different to what we feel.”
Sofie has become a spokeswoman for her community, particularly in the art world. She has also been inspired by the love of the Jewish community around the world who have helped fundraise for the rebuilding of the Be’eri art gallery and the kibbutz itself. In the spring she set up a temporary Be’eri art gallery in Tel Aviv – with architects volunteering to recreate a disused shop, which was donated. The gallery deliberately doesn’t have any October 7-inspired work.
From the Lighthouse series
“It is too early and emotionally almost impossible for us to be dealing with material about the massacre,” she says. “I think we – the team and maybe Israeli society in general – also need a safe haven where we can be reminded about the beauty of being human. It is like sending our message in a bottle to a future – hoping that society will catch up with us. We are surrounded by war – we don’t need it in our gallery.”
She is back living temporarily on Be’eri when we speak. Temporary housing – static caravans – is being built in the grounds of Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beersheva for the Be’eri community.
The new homes were meant to be ready in June – the latest date the community has been given for moving in is mid November – but, like many parents who want their children to return to their own school, she’s briefly returned home with around 200 others.
‘On one hand, is very good to be home, but on the other, it is a different place,’ she says. The house next to her, which was set alight by Hamas terrorists, was pulled down a couple of weeks before she returned and it took three weeks to make her own house habitable again. “There are loud explosions [from Gaza] so that’s not comfortable. The majority of the damaged and destroyed houses have been taken down so you can kind of avoid it – what happened – but of course you can’t really. The avoidance is energy consuming. We need to rest a while.”
It is thought it will be at least two years until the kibbutz returns – and only then if they can feel safe.
“We have a lot of work to do to rebuild our homes, our communities, our lives,” says Sofie. “We have to replace our government too. Israel has never been in a worse place.
“And, of course we need our hostages – there are three from the Kibbutz still in Gaza and it is inconceivable that a year later they are still there.”
There is still so much broken but she remains an optimist. “Having the kids back in the kibbutz makes things more hopeful for the future,” she says. “There is still life.”
To see Sofie’s work go to sofiemackie.com
