Wuthering Heights
Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv
May 6-August 31, 2025
Curator: Dr. Smadar Sheffi
Yoav Weinfeld‘s exhibition Wuthering Heights began to crystallize almost a year before the October 7th massacre in which Eynav Levy was murdered and her partner, Or Levy, was abducted to Gaza. Yoav and his partner Tal, Or’s brother, took it upon themselves to raise Almog, Or and Eynav’s two-year-old son. Work on the exhibition continued intermittently throughout Or’s 491 days in captivity, and its opening takes place a few months after his return to his family. The historical moment that resonates throughout the exhibition transformed theoretical questions about representation into acute issues, and Wuthering Heights challenges the very plausibility of representing reality.
The two parts of the exhibition convey different aspects of experiencing reality: the works on the entrance floor unfold like a stream of consciousness, with objects, memories, and stories forming a confluence. On the second floor, the installation Resonance Chamber explores affinities between art, ensconced in its realm, and the actuality knocking on its door.
Wuthering Heights addresses the paradoxical situation in which an emotional flood leads to the need to distance oneself. The dissonance present since the war’s outbreak is reiterated by the work—through its materials and the imagery of everyday objects that persist in an unflinching existence within an elegant setting.
The works are made of and on aluminum, a material that conveys alienation and harbors latent violence. Aluminum does not adsorb paint, hence the depicted images appear as if they are on the verge of detaching. In some images, the act of engraving—wounding the surface—underscores the scantiness and delicacy of the paint layer and the hardness of the metal beneath.
Works reminiscent of contact sheets (used to review analog film rolls) conjure up early photographic methods, including printing on metal plates to fix the image. In Wuthering Heights, the reality of the images seems transient, yet they are nevertheless fixed. Their fragility leaves us wondering: what have we seen, grasped, remembered—and what has happened?
