Born 1969 in Jerusalem, Israel, Sigalit Landau is an artist who has spent the last 15 years co-opting the Dead Sea to transform mundane objects such as a violin into a “crystalline object of wonder”.
Bordering Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, the Dead Sea is a hypersaline lake. Roughly 8.5 times saltier than the ocean, the salinity prevents macroscopic aquatic organisms such as fish from surviving. Due in thanks to its high salinity, the Dead Sea is popular with tourists as swimmers can experience natural buoyancy.
With the Dead Sea appearing as a “ritualistic motif”, Landau’s Salt series is created by immersing objects in the Dead Sea for months until covered in salt crystals.
Landau’s most notable Salt work is the Small Hasidic Salt Bride.
At the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria, Landau is currently presenting her work at the Salt Years exhibition curated by Thorsten Sadowsky with Marijana Schneider.
“Landau’s powerful and multi-layered works often address issues of female identity and physical experience, exploring issues such as the shadows thrown by the Holocaust, the tense political situation in Israel, and complex issues of justice, the structural violence and economic exploitation of nature,” said Museum der Moderne Salzburg. “Her deeply moving and ambivalent creations combine a poetic aura with striking symbolism and testify to the transformative, sustaining and healing properties of salt and its destructive power.”
“Powerfully moving, profoundly poetic, and pregnant with sometimes harrowing symbolism, Sigalit Landau’s oeuvre speaks to existential and ambivalent rites of passage and liminal experiences,” added Thorsten Sadowsky, director of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. “Created in one of the most conflict-ridden regions of the world, her works bear the vision of peaceful coexistence between different people, religions, cultures, and world-views, and this vision lends them universal relevance.”
