BrainStorming, 2025, Installation view at Monira Foundation, Jersey City, New Jersey, used canoe 15 feet long, ultramarine pigment color. Moving, 2025, video single channel 24 seconds in a loop
The installation explores how oceans and water channels shift identities and objects across borders. BrainStorming reflects on our relationship with nature, urging viewers to consider the history of waterways and their role in a rapidly changing world. A video shows a crab in the Red Sea (near the artist’s birthplace in Israel) crawling over coral, seemingly in search of a home while carrying its shell- both protection and burden. On the floor rests a used canoe filled with ultramarine blue pigment. The canoe, collected with help from locals, marks a meaningful moment in Anavy’s journey as an immigrant artist connecting with the Long Island Sound community. In the installation, the canoe becomes a symbolic vessel rich with American history and personal narrative, yet stripped of function, while the blue pigment speaks to the artist’s painterly identity.
Water Garden, 2024, installation view at BioBAT Art Space, Brooklyn, New York, ink and colored pencils on transparent Mylar, acrylic tubes, single channel video, 11seconds in a loop
Water Garden is an installation combines works from different creative periods and locations into a single composition, creating a visual diary that reflects key artistic milestones for the artist, all of which are connected by the theme of water.
The video explores the relationship between light and water, as well as the layer beneath the surface, and was created during an artist residency program on Long Island, NY, inspired by the ocean.
The painting, created with ink and colored pencils on transparent Mylar, was inspired by the fiery red hibiscus flower. In the artwork, the flower is depicted in a state of pallor, symbolizing withering and fading—an intermediate state of transition. The image of the hibiscus has been abstracted into a form that hints at parts of the flower, which seem to be washed away by the sea water or the gray-black ink of the work.
Folded Tears, 2024, installation view, ink and graphite on rice paper, drifted branches
Folded Tears is an ongoing series of drawing installations composed of drawings of ink and graphite on rise scrolls paper, wrap loosely drifted found branches.
The work was made from a profound personal loss, and the choice of using paper reflects fragility and impermanence. The work deals with water, which is a source of life, but also with the meaning of the connection between water and mourning and the role water plays as part of the universal human experience of grief.
Anavy uses natural, found objects from the coast of Long Island, where she has done several artist residencies over the recent years. This installation uses materials deeply implicated in ecology, but for Anavy, it serves as a visual travel diary that tells her transnational journey. For Anavy, every object and branch she use in this composition carries with it a personal memory.
The work questions our perception of natural world, reflects on the notion of the ocean, conceiving it as a complex contact point between two elements that push and pull while continuing to support one another: The Ocean as imminent threat, which represent uncontrolled wildness, and at the same time symbolizes complete freedom, meditation and calm
Water has also served as a gateway and passage to explore far places and connect with others. These sculptural objects echoes Chinese scrolls drawings, but also signify a longing for another place, in which the sea that symbolizes a state of personal consciousness.
The word ‘Folded’ mention in the title reminiscent of a souvenir from a distant land, an object that can be carried from place to place, folds within it memory, longing and dreaming.
River, 2021, ink and colored pencils on transparent Mylar,
36 inches X 26 feet 8.86 inches
River is a long scroll drawing which was a part of the site-specific installation: I wish I Had a River, The Underground Lobby Garden (Anavy’s solo show at ZAZ10TS, 2021). A massive 26 feet long blue ink on transparent Mylar painting – shaping the path of both life and art creation – leading the viewer deeper within the shells and paintings installation on the wall next to it, and creates a painted body of water that act as a river as well as an ocean.
The painting connects also to the tradition of abstract painting in its visually and also in the way of action as gestural abstraction, emphasizes the importance of a painting created from an act on one massive scroll, and the relationship between the artist’s body and surface. The work is about water was created with water that is controlled by the artist and also those that are less controlled such as natural rainwater. Elements of control such as the composition versus elements of chance are key elements in this work.