Little black dress: an art project by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau called “Salt Bride”

Israeli sculptor Sigalit Landau invented her technique of making works by immersing the frame of papier-mâché objects in water Dead Sea. Before immersion, objects are secured with fishing lines or cords to wooden or metal frames. The entire performance is carefully documented in photos and videos. The process of salt crystallization on the frame is also constantly filmed and monitored by the author on a special website through underwater mini-cameras. When the thing is completely covered with a salt crust, the sculptor takes it out and puts it on display for the audience.

For Sigalit Landau, the Dead Sea is not just a place unique in its healing and ecological significance. For her, the Dead Sea is a place of important personal memories, where she often visited as a child and married to photographer and collaborator Yotam From.

At the same time, the sea is a place of Power, on a planetary, cosmic scale. According to her Sigalit Landau, she chose this sea because it is here that truth and spirituality are to some extent “tangible.” The absence of gravity, the different refraction of light in water, the unity of the beauty of the place and its frightening sterility - this is what forces the sculptor to continue to crystallize his signs - memories - in it.

As a conceptual sculptor, Landau is convinced that the Dead Sea changes the properties of objects immersed in it not only externally, but also changes them inner essence. Having been in the waters of this sea, things move into another reality, lose their previous utilitarian meaning and become signs in new universe. Ballet tutu, Wedding Dress, shoes and even a violin - they are all signs of another universe that have returned to our reality.

Associated with each item personal story sculptor, which is documented in detail in the form of texts and photographs in the book “Salt Years”. The book is dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Segalit Landau’s work and talks in detail about how she donates significant things to the sea and the sea returns them transformed. Landau sees a biblical meaning in this sacrifice, giving a part of herself to the sea. So, tutu- a symbol of her giving up her dream of becoming a ballerina so that her parents would not separate. This pack, transformed by salt, is a symbol of illusory hopes healed by the sea.

Sigalit Landau was born in Jerusalem in 1969, then lived for some time in the USA and Great Britain. She graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in the 1990s. After a six-month internship in New York, she lives permanently in Israel.

Sigalit Landau's performances remind viewers that you need to be able to sacrifice something dear to you for the sake of a great goal.

Exhibition " Endless games"passes in State Gallery on Solyanka as part of the European tour of the Sigalit Landau museum retrospective

Meeting with herself famous artist Israel, Sigalit Landau, will take place on June 7 at 12:00

One of the most prominent women in art XXI century was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Philadelphia and London, and then returned to Tel Aviv, where for two decades now, according to her own definition, “builds bridges” between the past and the future, East and West, man and society, making a video understandable to the whole world from the first frame. Today, Sigalit Landau's works are included in the collections of leading museums contemporary art, including the Pompidou Center in Paris - here video and installations of Sigalit along with the works of Eva Hesse, Louis Bourgeois and Marina Abramovic were presented at the exhibition “Women in Art” (2010), as well as the KW Institute for Media Arts in Berlin (one-woman exhibition in 2007 ), and New York's MoMA, where Landau's solo exhibition opened in 2008, ahead of a retrospective of major video art icon Pipilotti Rist. In 2011, Sigalit Landau represented Israel for the second time at Venice Biennale- the exhibition “One Man’s Floor is another Man’s Feelings” became one of the most popular projects in the Giardini Gardens, and the beginning of the Sigalit retrospective’s journey around the world.

The Moscow exhibition - the first stop on the European tour - presents more than ten works by the artist, including her latest videos - “Salt Lake” and “Azkelon” (2011), premiere show which took place as part of the exhibition “Gender for one - Soul for another” in the Israeli National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The primary elements of Sigalit art - soil, water and salt - are constant in her works, as symbols of the homeland, life and wisdom ancient people. With the memory of pain and the dream of peace, the artist picturesquely demonstrates the current state of modern Israel, seasoning its drama, grief and happiness with poetry spilled into the frame. At the same time, throughout last decade, in the works of Sigalit, the figure of the artist of the future emerges more and more clearly, who not only documents and explores, but, using the wisdom of generations, builds peace on his land, where the endless circle of despair - a hoop of barbed wire - gives way to the image of calm and eternity. Dead Sea Salt in Landau's works, being a symbol of the Covenant between God and people, cleanses the conscience and soul, dries wounds through pain, becoming the memory of destinies and the hope of a new history.

A retrospective at the State Gallery on Solyanka will allow us to trace the evolution poetic images Sigalit Landau on the example of the most significant work artists - “Three Man Hula” (1999), “Dancing For Maya”, “Looking at the Dead” / DeadSee (2005), “Day Done” (2007) and others.

Sigalit Landau born in Jerusalem in 1969, studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem from 1990 to 1995. She spent one semester at the Cooper Union School of Art (New York) as part of a student exchange program. After several years spent in London, Sigalit Landau settled in Tel Aviv, where she continues to live and work. The artist creates works in various media (graphics, sculpture, video and performance); Landau’s projects include independent/autonomous installations and works that are in close connection with environment. Her practice addresses a range of social, humanitarian and environmental issues, particularly themes of homelessness, exile, the relationship between victim and offender, and between decay and growth. Because the most of Landau's works are associated with the human condition; a key position in her art is occupied by human body(often her own). Using salt, sugar, paper and various ready-made objects, the artist creates large-scale installations that radically modify the surrounding space. Sigalit Landau represented Israel twice at the Venice Biennale in 1997 and 2011, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 10th Documenta in Kassel (1997) and the Armory Show in New York (2005).

Wednesday, January 25, 2017 02:03 + to quote book

Small black dress for the bride

Sigalit Landau, an artist from Israel, began her project “Salt Bride” three years ago. In 2014 she sank a black dress victorian era into the waters of the Dead Sea and observed the changes taking place, recording everything on film. Two years later, the dress was removed from the water, but it was all covered with a salt crust and turned from black to white.

IN this moment Eight photographs of the Salt Bride project are exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in London. As the artist herself admits, she was inspired by the 1916 play “Between Two Worlds” for these manipulations with the dress. “The dress seemed to have turned into snow or sugar. It’s like accepting death: solid tears, like whiteness, surrendering under the combined pressure of fire and water,” Landau poetically talks about his project.

Limits of fantasy creative people don’t borrow and often they simply don’t exist. As proof of this, for example, the installation of the Israeli artist Sigalit Landau of her project “Salty Bride”.
Artist Sigalit Landau sank a black mourning dress to the bottom of the Dead Sea. Over the course of two years, the artist's team dived into the sea to capture the level of growth of sparkling salt crystals.

The project was inspired by The Dybbuk, a 1916 drama about unhappy love and exorcism in Jewish folklore. The dress is a copy of what actress Hanna Rovina wore - main character films.

For two for long years the mourning dress was on day of the dead sea, gradually becoming covered with salt crystals. There was such a large layer of salt on the dress that it could not be pulled ashore, so some fragments remained in the sea.

With her project Sigalit showed amazing power nature, capable of miraculously changing various objects.

“The Salty Bride” Sigalit Landau

Victoria Wright

How can you turn an ordinary, unremarkable black dress into a shiny, sparkling work of art without adding rhinestones or covering it in glitter?

Of course, immerse it in the Dead Sea.

An unusual art project by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau is called “The Salty Bride.” Salt Bride»).

An ordinary black dress was immersed in the waters of the Dead Sea for 2 months, checking its condition every couple of weeks. During this time, 8 photographs were taken that clearly show the stages of transformation of a piece of clothing.

While the dress was in the water, salt crystals formed on its fabric. With each new sparkling salty layer, the dress became harder and harder.

Final result turned out to be amazing.

The artist was inspired for the project by the play “Dybbuk,” written in Yiddish. The dress used in the installation is an exact copy traditional Hasidic dress worn by the play's protagonist, the young bride Leah.

The play tells the story of how a girl's body was taken over by a spirit and the subsequent exorcism ceremony.

An artistic interpretation of Sigalit shows how a black dress, a symbol of death and madness, turns into a white wedding dress in dark waters of Dead seas.

Sigalit Landau chose the Dead Sea for her project for a reason

The artist grew up in a house on a hill overlooking the northern part of the Dead seas. The girl had previously used salt-rich seawater for her projects to transform various items into statues, covering them with crystals, and filming underwater videos.

Sigalit says that the Dead Sea has special kind of magic.

« It all looks like snow", says the press release from The Salty Bride. - " It's like sugar, like death's embrace; these are pure tears. As if white retreats before the union of fire and water».

Photos of the dress transformation can be seen in London Museum MarlboroughContemporary