Sigalit Landau: Salt Bride

About

Marlborough Contemporary is pleased to present Salt Bride, a series of eight large colour prints by Sigalit Landau.  Photographed underwater, working in collaboration with Yotam From, the images document the transformation of a dress submerged in the salt-rich waters of the Dead Sea. 

The traditional Hasidic garment shown in the photographs is a replica of the costume worn by the female character Leah in the canonical Yiddish play, The Dybbuk.

Written by S. Ansky between 1913 and 1916, The Dybbuk tells the story of a young bride possessed by an evil spirit and subsequently exorcised. In Landau’s Salt Bride series, Leah’s black garb is transformed underwater as salt crystals gradually adhere to the fabric. Over time, the sea’s alchemy transforms the plain garment from a symbol associated with death and madness into the wedding dress it was always intended to be.

Landau’s practice is deeply connected with the Dead Sea. The artist shot some of her most iconic videos in its water, and has been experimenting with the salt crystallization of objects for years. The Dead Sea – the lifeless, lowest place on earth, in which the dress was immersed in one state, and from which it was pulled out in a very different form – sets an anticipated yet uncontrolled organic process in motion.

As Landau states: 

“Over the years, I learnt more and more about this low and strange place. Still the magic is there waiting for us: new experiments, ideas and understandings. It is like meeting with a different time system, a different logic, another planet. It looks like snow, like sugar, like death’s embrace; solid tears, like a white surrender to fire and water combined.”

Sigalit Landau (born in Jerusalem, 1969, lives and works in Tel Aviv) first represented Israel at the Venice Biennale in 1997 in a group show, followed by a solo presentation in the Israel national pavilion in 2011. She has featured in numerous exhibitions and museums, such as Documenta X in 1997, MoMA, New York in 2008 and a retrospective at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2014. Her work is found in many major collections, including MoMA and Centre Pompidou.