Well (2020) is an installation by Israeli artists Noga Or Yam and Faina Feigin. It investigates the story of an underground passage in Tel Aviv designed by a British Mandate-era Jewish architect. Starting from this building, the artists’ archival research leads them to the story of a water source which does not figure in the architect’s plan. While the story of the well is unearthed, so is one about the tense relations between the Jewish architect and the Palestinian orange merchant who inhabited the site before 1948. By restaging a hypothetical archive, Well reminds us of the problems inherent in narrative formation and erasure in the context of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Noga Or Yam also examined space and water in an earlier work, Black Soldier, White Soldier (2018): with the background sound of water drilling in southern Israel, urban photographic landscapes of Palestinian rooftops covered with water tanks are projected onto the walls. Water, either concealed or lacking, emerges in both works as a vehicle for unearthing a historical narrative that counters the official one. This research article reflects on contemporary art’s engagement with the formation of history, and how such engagement shapes the identity of present-day art in postcolonial realities.