Dvir Gallery presented two Salt Works, Bride without flowers (2018) veil coated in salt crystals and Annabelle (2021) shoes coated in salt crystals by Sigalit Landau for Frieze SEOUL period. 

▲Annabelle (2021) shoes coated in salt crystals 37 x 13 x 13cm, unique by Sigalit Landau presenting Dvir Gallery booth Frieze SEOUL period (photo provided by Dvir Gallery)

Sigalit Landau is an interdisciplinary artist in various works such as sculpture, painting, photography, video, and performance. Who is one of Israel’s most prominent contemporary artists among her generation. She was born in Jerusalem in 1969 and graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1994. Now she currently lives and works in Israel. The place of Israel is a crucial part of what she does and who she is. Her work has been exhibited at international institutions and such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and has received significant awards several times.

Her subjects of art touch on personal, historical, political, and ecological subjects such as, banishment, the relationships between East and West, and decay and growth, etc. She is involved in the Dead Sea area and has created kinds of sculptures and videos, and photographs at the sea. It has been Sigalit Landau's inspirational and creative testing ground for over fifteen years. The Dead Sea is a mystical, enchanted place for Landau. She refers to the Dead Sea as a mirror that enables her relationship with herself and her nation’s past.

▲ Dead Sea where Sigalit Landau works for her art (photo provided by Dvir Gallery)

In 2004, Landau began her series Salt Years. For the project, she submerged personal belongings, perishable objects that are temporary and things that are hand-made from specific or symbolic materials goes into the 456 meters down the deep Dead Sea. The objects spend two years in the salt water, and the salt crusts in, crystalized in the object with a salinity of 34%, almost ten times as salty as the oceans. To capture the process, Landau goes into the Dead Sea. After that time, objects became beautiful creations of sculptures coated in salt crystals.

▲Taking out crystalized artwork from Dead Sea (photo provided by Dvir Gallery)

One with historical significance that dominates her presence and marks the future. It is where she performs creative rituals that turn her objects into Salt Work. Repeating pilgrimage to the Dead Sea to collect artworks encompasses significant mythic spaces that are considered rigid and challenging, and even danger sometimes.

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