The Negev Museum of Art is honored to present Anna Fromchenko’s exhibition Wishing Well. Fromchenko (b. 1952) is a multidisciplinary artist who combines sculpture, painting, photography, and video. Her practice often involves removing objects from their original context and imbuing them with a new poetic meaning – as seen here. The exhibition is dedicated to the installation Wishing Well – a site-specific work comprising video, sound, and sculpture that opens a well of water in the heart of the exhibition space.
The image of the well, steeped in biblical tradition and rooted in the Land of Israel, marks the confluence of existential necessity and symbolic significance. As a source of water, the well is a source of life, but it also brings to the fore our dependence on nature and the fragility of human existence. Drying, sealing, or poisoning a well poses a real life-and-death threat, especially in the desert. As a deep and hidden space, the well can also become a pit of falling and entrapment, and at the same time represents an inner realm of memory, the subconscious, and hidden psychological layers. This duality has shaped the notion of a “wishing well” that recurs across many cultures – a metaphysical portal of hope, faith, and magic, into which we cast our longings and prayers beyond the visible and the present.
Fromchenko’s Wishing Well sits on the museum floor as a sculptural object. The video footage set among the stones creates the illusion of water rising and falling slowly, to the rhythm of breathing. A stone bench is placed next to the well, inviting visitors to sit, slow down, and linger in the experience. Detaching the well from the context of functional use allows it to serve as a space for reflection: it is no longer a destination for making a wish, but a fraught site where the movement between waxing and waning heightens the tension between hope and loss, and between presence and absence – as one of the lines of the poem whispered in the background echoes: “You cannot see the water / for the water.”
Curator: Ron Bartos
