Littoral

For the past fifteen years, the sculptor and video and installation artist Sigalit Landau (b. 1969) has repeatedly revisited the Dead Sea as a source of inspiration and laboratory. It has been the setting of the gestation of many of her works—in particular, various mundane objects that she “baptizes” by immersing them in the world’s saltiest sea for months until, covered by salt crystals, they are transformed into objects of mesmerizing, haunting beauty. Landau’s powerful and multifaceted works often probe questions of female identity and bodily experience, and explore themes such as the shadows cast by the Holocaust; the tense political situation in Israel; and complex issues of justice, structural violence, and the economic exploitation of nature. Combining a poetic aura with striking symbolism, her deeply moving creations reveal, with profound ambivalence, the transformative, sustaining, and healing properties of salt, as well as its destructive power.

https://www.museumdermoderne.at/en/exhibitions-events/detail/sigalit-landausalt-yearsmoenchsberg-rupertinum/

Landau calls the Dead Sea a mirror that assists her in addressing (through the language of art) her relationship with herself and with her nation’s past. Her artwork is a story about what this immense body of water – called the Salt Sea in the Old Testament, the Sea of Sodom in the New Testament and the Devil’s Sea during the time of the Crusaders – means to her and the people living around it. How has it influenced their fate in the past and still today? Over the past 15 years, the image of the Dead Sea has materialised in Landau’s work in performances, video art, and also crystalline objects, or salt sculptures. A book titled Salt Years, documenting the relationship between Landau and the Dead Sea, is currently being prepared.

How has your relationship with the Dead Sea changed over these past 15 years? I assume that in the beginning the dialogue between the two of you was much different.

To be honest, both the sea and have changed together – as I’ve experimented and as my ideas have developed – changed developed a dialogue and ritual. When I began this project, I had a different view of the Dead Sea. I chose the site mainly for its unique character. Everything in its water swims and is buoyant, everything is physically different there – people’s relationship to the mass of their bodies and the way in which they experience their bodies, the water, the acoustics, more oxygen in the atmosphere.

The watermelons you see in the video are ‘inspired’ by the ones that grow in the desert by the sea and are the first crop of the season. Growers in the Arava Desert have been experimenting with using salt water from local saline underground wells for quite some time now, with success. It turns out that there are several plants that not only tolerate but actually thrive when watered with groundwater containing a considerable amount of salt. True, it’s not water straight from the Dead Sea; it’s less salty and comes from deep underground. But when I read about this study and saw these watermelons and their colour – this oxymoronic striving for extra-sweetness in a life-less, saltwater environment – this seemed to me like a metaphor for homeostasis, for the way in which we have adapted to a specific harsh place. And that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time – trying to get used to this extreme place in which there are no signs of life but which has some very different qualities and hidden abilities. The ecological conditions, the political situation, the topography, all of it changes. But at the same time, these powerful myths remain, the myths that every child who grows up in this area knows. They’re just engraved in our emotional map.

I was born in Jerusalem and have always been more linked and intrigued with its eastern side. The people on the other side of the mountains, on the other side of the Jordan Valley. My world has also been influenced by the fact that my mother’s parents were passionate communists and then disillusioned socialists, and that my mum grew up in a Christian culture and tradition in London back in the 1950's. Her experience of immigration was tinted with a yearning of pilgrimage whilst celebrating the ‘kibbutz’ way of life, where we used to visit her extended family – two very bizarre and opposing approaches in my upbringing.

My mother died less than a year before I filmed DeadSee, and my presence in this distinctly corporeal chain of watermelons, my belonging to it, was like moving from something very extreme and metaphorical towards a sensual and intimate opening of wounds.. At first I wondered what I could do – in a way, I was in this weightless ephemeral staging, and I needed to understand what I am in the frame of this shot. Robert Smithson was in the back of my mind, but in front was the gaze of a camera looking down at the fluid canvas with the chain of fruit and my vulnerable body.

With time, I noticed that the odd things we forgot on the shore during the production and shooting of the first videos started to crystallise and lose both function and colour – the salt whitens and eliminated everything, and it seals like a scab of crystals and encrusting surfaces. I have been suspending objects in the Dead Sea for many years since then. Each ready-made or fabricated object has the ability to seal and heal; each carries a small story… This interaction creates new knowladge, new experiments and different ideas over the years. The political issues were aroused only in 2010 when I raised my gaze to acknowledge that the sea was also a "political liquid" shared by a country in the background of this medium and canvas of storytelling – Who does the sea belong to? Whom do I need to ask for permission in order to work here? When I try to build a bridge, do I need to talk with the government or with one of the industrial corporations? Who is incharge of the territorial water? Do they collabourate?

It’s no surprise that the Dead Sea is currently on the cusp of an ecological catastrophe. Each year its water level drops by about a metre. That’s due to the fact that the course of the Jordan River, the sea’s main source of water, has gradually changed over the years, but also because of seismic activity in the area and the industrial ambitions of corporations. In addition, as the water level falls, fresh groundwater is being pushed up, which dissolves the layers of salt and creates very dangerous and very sudden large holes which they are called sinkholes from time to time, by now so many have perforated the shores, and this is why the area looks and functions like an active disaster zone. They first appeared in the 1970s, and in recent years their number has really increased– there are already about 4000 sinkholes on the western coast of the Dead Sea. Some of them are up to 25 metres deep, with diameters of 40 metres. You’re driving along a road you supposedly know very well, when suddenly it disappears. That’s the reality that you can’t run away from.

I began looking at the colour white with different eyes, by sinking a blue flag into the sea and later pulling out a white flag, by sinking a black dress into the water and transforming her to be what I could be. This is a way in which something is as though erased, how it is lost but witnessed, how it leaves or stays connected to the sea basin. But as a parallel, there’s also this very positive feeling – gifts and surprises created by nature. Like farmers who delight in a new harvest, we’ve had wonderful moments in our relationship with the Dead Sea, too. Even though the concern for its fate is always in the background, and more so year by year and day by day…

On the other side of the river is Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, and the border runs down the middle of the sea. There’s peace between Israel and Jordan, yet there are no ships on the sea, and the tourism between the two lands is very limited. In a way, this is a very salty and frozen border. In 2014, wishing to celebrate 20 years of peace between the two countries, I planned to sail across the sea in a boat, to mark the route of a future floating hbridge. I looked for ways in which to do this gesture legally, a journey that combined art and activism. Needless to say, I came up against an enormous bureaucracy. It is true that, in order to avoid calling something a catastrophe, you can always say that you expected something different, but you end up having to work within the situation that reality has set in front of you. And then you understand those utopian people who are able to defend their ideas with action. So, not having obtained official permission, I nevertheless rowed to the middle of the sea in a boat that was full of fantastic people from all over the world, from Jordan, too. It was documented on video, sort of. Well, in this case the middle of the sea was quite approximate – considering that the Dead Sea borders three different countries, it was impossible to determine the exact border.

Before the water – there is something very healing about the air at the Dead Sea. There’s a lot of oxygen, and you really have the feeling that this place can and wants to cure you also spiritually. It simply lets you be and gives you the peace to think about life. Kind of like being in the desert but with an allusive sea and a majestic, mythological narrative – there’s always this surreal feeling of pureness here, because there’s less nature and more minerals.

And those are also the questions we’ve been been asking in the book we are now creating, which documents my 15-year-long relationship with the Dead Sea. Why did I come here? What brought me here? What does it mean to be a Salt Bride? What does time do to us? How does the political transform into the historical, and how can we help make things better? This work is very closely linked with traditions, but also with the idea of devilment. It’s a story about the sometimes so elusive interspace – the space between life and death, the space between man and woman, that volatile moment of ‘here and now’. Loss and sorrow, the bereavement process that can take place through art. How we replace something we are missing. People we miss, a culture we miss – also in a philosophical sense. The salty wings of ‘lack’…

When I’m working on big projects, I always feel like there’s some kind of communal sensitivity, a shared heart/brain. Of course, I make my own decisions, but at the same time I also take the time to tune in to and listen, and it’s important for me to feel and be in a passionate surrounding regarding the things we’re doing. I could not do it alone. It’s very easy to dedicate wonderful words to the Dead Sea, but it’s very difficult to work here in the summer. Yes, it’s romantic, but it’s also very harsh.

An essential part of my work is the fact that I’m an independent artist. At least at this point in my career, I do not rely on any norm or system. I’m trying to survive without all of that for a bit – without galleries that I’ve worked with before, without exhausting, hyped art fairs. I’m taking a break from that loop.

Your work has to do with borders – literal, structural, abstract. What does border mean to you as an artist, and are there some borders you know you will never cross?

I often looked at this word ‘border’. It is firstly just a word, and language in itself is one of the first and sometimes the worst kind of border and zone for me… On a more practical level: I once believed that artists from both sides of a conflict have more in common with each other and can create discussions that can pave new ways to lessen suffering… After trying hard to find a partner outside of my identity and culture, across the divides, I’m realising that looking inward and acknowledging the limits and sink holes of my body and biography may be a more productive borderline journey.

The French sculptor Bernar Venet once told me in an interview that, to him, creating art is like an act of heroism. What does this process mean to you?

Yes, I think that creating good art is usually a struggle and a battle. It’s like going out to war, and I can identify with this feeling. We live in a war zone anyhow… Although I don’t know if it’s an act of heroism, because I’m usually not completely alone. And although it’s a process that involves some struggle, there are other moments when it’s like picking ripe fruit on a sunny day. On the one hand it’s a battle, on the other hand it’s harmony.

When the circle has been closed, the energy of our teamwork is transferred from the studio or location to the public. Opening closed ears and hearts and celebrating something that has nothing to do with consumer culture. Something that unites people, that crosses borders, genders and social status.

There are fewer and fewer constraints in contemporary art; there isn’t this strict definition that you’re either a painter or a sculptor. I work with various media and try not to confuse myself too much, though I am naturally a confused and distracted animal. I think an artist always realises that the moment when her work is finished, it can travel without her. It can become a part of a dialogue. Something that speaks to people and something they wish to enjoy. Some of these things still amaze me.

A few years ago you took part in the exhibition No Man’s Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, which featured only art by women. Do you think there’s still a difference between women and men in art?

The art is the same language of art, but the experience of women and their perceptions and strategies can be unique to them. In most cases…in my case, body, life and subconscious are distinctly alien-feminine-collective with a strong attraction to all others. In techniques, I love crossing the lines back and forth, depending on the fluid conditions of the above – body, life, subconscious…things that happen to me.

The dynamics of women’s daily lives have not become any simpler. I don’t think it helps my career that I’m a woman. I would be collected and followed more loyally if I were a man. I smashed the glass ceiling and am left with the pieces of glass under my skin and inside me. In fact, it’s probably the opposite. Especially if I’m strong and have my own opinions – those are traits that traditionally belong to charming, charismatic men. That’s still the reality. But it’s possible that things have taken a turn for the better in that tiny part of western society that’s called the art world. The art world has filled with women in the last two to three decades: curators, critics, directors of small and medium museums. That’s simply the way it is – the art[ist] and the art world are not the same thing… And every day I realise that there are things I need to do just because I’m a woman, an older woman, a bit older than I used to be. And I am an artist-mother, which makes things more (a)cute. I could not imagine my life without gratefully and lovingly sharing it with Yotam and Imree, but I try sometimes – and that’s also important: trying to be Sigalit Landau.

Your work Ectopic Pregnancy, which can be seen in the Dreams and Dramas exhibition, is made of papier-mâché. What draws you to this material?

Papier-mâché is not a high-art, professional material. But it’s very easy to work with and lets you do practically anything. Ectopic was made when my studio was near a gift-wrap factory. But what initially drew me to it was the fact that papier-mâché is so directly linked with reality, time and bad news – most of my sculptures have traces of text on them. I first worked with papier-mâché in 2002, when I made The Country installation. That was the time of the second Palestinian uprising (Al-Aqsa Intifada), and the newspapers and everything was full of news from hell. I took these headlines and used them to make images of fruit and people whose skin was covered/exposed with everything that could be read in the news at that time. The private and public.

Paper and glue – working with papier-mâché is very physical, very physiological, it’s like chewed paper, it’s dirty, it has a connotation of rumination. Advertisements and colours, it’s all mixed together, and in a sense it’s really like working with the loss of coherency. Kind of like making art out of shoe strings. It doesn’t cost anything. And a work of art that’s first been made in papier-mâché can later be cast in bronze. In that sense, I have no problem with it, no problem moving from this seeming nothing to much ‘finer’ materials. When I create art, I always have the feeling that I have nothing to lose. Even if it’s bronze or marble. I remember and celebrate freedom even in the realm of precious traditional techniques. I need freedom when interacting with the big inspiration in art history, when looking at daily life all around me, when reading and also when creating specific rules for myself and then later questioning them.

https://arterritory.com/en/visual_arts/interviews/20671-a_dialogue_with_the_dead_sea/

What attracted you to the Dead Sea as an artist?

The Dead Sea attracted me as an artist because I believe that it is a place where truth and spirituality are in a way “tangible.” The different rules of gravity and light, beauty and sterility, and a lot of childhood memories are what brought me time and time again to create, experiment, shoot, sail, and crystalize memories in this one lake.

In 2002, just before my mother’s death, I exhibited a show called The Country in the basement of a Tel Aviv gallery depicting allegorically with Dionysian urgency—a world of bloodbaths taken from the second intifada terror attacks of those days.

In that installation, which was impactful, I used agriculture, a fundamental theme in Zionist identity, agenda, and practice, with the return to the land as “new-Jews,” in a metaphoric way—and the scene I depicted there was a harvest of red fruit which I made from daily newspapers.

A year later, after losing my mother, I looked for a less allegorical fruit and more physical presence … my search ended when I discovered the findings of desert-water researchers regarding watermelons. Watermelons are sweeter and with a thinner rind if they are watered with undrinkable saline water from wells which are located in the Arava desert, not far from the southern part of the Dead Sea.

What was the first artwork you produced in the Dead Sea?

After spending some years working and passing by the British, French, Berlin, New York art worlds, on the move, hardly affording a house—let alone a studio—in 2003 my mother died. I had just been commissioned to do a large show in the Tel Aviv Museum in an autonomous pavilion called the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion—donated to the young city of Tel Aviv by Rubinstein in the mid 60’s.

My work at the Dead Sea started in this show which was called The Endless Solution; My first, and most well-known video works, were made for this exhibition; DeadSee, Dancing for Maya, Standing on a Watermelon, Under the Dead Sea—and I started working with crystals and learning what the “rules of the shore” were in this rediscovered ex-territory.

As a site-specific artist, trying to somewhat ignore the anecdotal mundane reality and facts, I think due to the death of my mother, I started my journey to the “Red Rock” [Petra, Jordan] by reading and translating into drawings my experience of the Judea, Arava, and Negev desserts in combination with the life story of Helena [of Troy + Mrs.]. Anti-Aging, and in parallel to my mother's legacy (post-World War II immigrant to Israel via being born in London, daughter of Viennese intellectuals, refugees, who stayed to live in, and died in London).

My experience was formulated while taking into account all of these revelations and many more—I saw no other way: it was Tel Aviv which needed to be ‘woken up’ to my storytelling so that I could free fall into this very real ‘hole’ [rift valley] in time: my memories were so different than what Tel Avivian’s were trying to do and be. Rather than rotating around the sun: I asked the sun to rotate around “The Desert,” planet Jerusalem, the hole.

In 2016, your work Salt Bride received an incredible amount of attention. What do you think it was about that piece in particular that captured the public’s imagination?

That a bride can be from salt and not from sugar. That the past can be transformed so drastically and nature so healing. That a place writes your identity so boldly in this area…

https://mymodernmet.com/sigalit-landau-salt-years/

Phoenician Sand Dance was created from behind the scenes footage of Dancing for Maya (2005). We dig and crawl as the waves continuously blur our lines.

The body and the labor — are explored in affinity with the sea, the sand, and the changing of the sky. In this video, the digging marks are not filmed — the panoptic (historic) perspective showing the bigger picture is not available to the viewer.

https://www.sigalitlandau.com/phoenician-sand-dance-video-2005

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