Sigalit Landau. Better Place

About

In a broader view, Sigalit Landau questions the relevance, the naivety and the danger of thinking Change and Progress only through the Great Utopias that marked the XX and XXI centuries. The “Unité d'Habitation” of Le Corbusier is a collective housing project, designed to give modern man the means to adapt to post war economic and machinists living conditions. It stands as a paragon among the Utopias. To the totalising and generic solutions, Landau opposes singular ways and women voices. As if, after the time of Great Utopias and their lots of abstraction, came a time of come back to the stories, the domestic and the intimate.

In the cellule516, Sigalit Landau takes a stand through a vast collection of works (sculptures, installations, videos, drawings...), some new or previously unseen, other reactivated and rearranged especially for the place and context. 

Rules of work :

- The artist is invited to stay for a few days at the “cellule516”, so that she can feel what the verb “inhabit” means for her, and define the content of her exhibition.
- For the exhibition as such, she can make all the space hers, modify the setting of furniture and objects, hide and replace them but not damage them; she can change the use of the rooms, empty or fill them in, but she will need to maintain the “vital” functions of the apartment, which remains inhabited during the 3-month public opening.

The result of her residency in the cellule516 will be open to be experienced during Summer, from May 30 to August 29, 2015.

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Son intervention dans la Cellule516, Sigalit Landau l’a intitulée « better place ». La référence à l’entreprise éponyme de véhicules électriques est immédiate : la compagnie israélienne Better Place voulait créer un monde meilleur, un monde sans essence. Plus largement, c’est la pertinence, la naïveté et le danger, de penser le changement et le progrès à travers de grandes utopies comme celles qui ont marqué les XXe et XXIe siècles, que met ici en cause Sigalit Landau. Parmi ces utopies, l’Unité d’Habitation Le Corbusier, en tant que projet d’habitat collectif conçu pour donner à l’homme moderne les moyens de s’adapter aux conditions de vie économiques et « machinistes » de l’après seconde guerre mondiale, fait figure de parangon.

Dans la Cellule516, Sigalit Landau prend position à travers un vaste ensemble d’oeuvres (sculptures, installations, vidéos, dessins…), certaines inédites, d’autres réactivées et ré-agencées spécifiquement pour le lieu et le contexte.