Dress Immersed in Dead Sea Emerges as Sparkling Salt-Encrusted Masterpiece

Israeli artist Sigalit Landau has an almost mystical reverence for the Dead Sea. Growing up in Jerusalem, she could gaze upon its storied northern shores from the hill where her childhood home stood. Her family would make weekend sojourns to the Dead Sea’s coastline, immersing her in its surreal, mineral-rich environs from an early age. That profound connection to this primordial landscape has seeped into Landau’s artistic vision and use of materials.

Her latest tour de force, the captivating photo series “Salt Bride,” represents an extraordinarily alchemical partnership with the Dead Sea’s unique properties. In 2014, Landau submerged a simple black dress in the lake’s depths as an artistic experiment. Over the next three months, she periodically revisited the dress, documenting its gradual, breathtaking transformation as salt crystals slowly encrusted the fabric.

What emerged was nothing short of metaphysical transfiguration. The once-black garment had become sheathed in a shimmering, snowflake-like crystalline crust. “It looked like snow, like sugar, like death’s embrace,” Landau mused in her signature poetic language, struck by the haunting yet beautiful metamorphosis.

The “Salt Bride” series took conceptual inspiration from the 1916 Yiddish play “The Dybbuk” by S. Ansky, a darkly romantic supernatural drama. The play centers on a young woman about to enter an arranged marriage, who becomes possessed by the soul of her deceased true love. Landau hoped to channel that eerie ambiance of forbidden desire, spiritual interference, and occult mysteries.

Tellingly, the original black dress was a meticulously crafted replica of the costume used in 1920s theater productions of “The Dybbuk.” As salt slowly crystalized over its fibers, the sable sculpture was reborn as a glistening, spectral bride. The salt itself seemed to symbolize the mystic, all-consuming force that had possessed and transformed the dress.

There was also a conceptual symmetry between the material and artistic processes involved. Just as the dress had to be fully submerged to facilitate its amazing crystalline overhaul, so did each of Landau’s photographs require immersion in a liquid emulsion in order to be developed and printed.

When “Salt Bride” was exhibited at London’s prestigious Marlborough Contemporary gallery in 2016, viewers were transfixed by Landau’s ingenious melding of natural and supernatural forces. Her ability to coax the Dead Sea’s bodily salts into surreal, spectral sculptural life felt like the work of an artistic mystic. By collaborating with this most legendary of landscapes, Landau had conjured images shimmering with the delicate, ethereal power of an ancient fable.

Source:

Sigalit Landau: Website
Marlborough Contemporary: Website | Facebook | Instagram
via [Lost At E Minor, The New York Times Style Magazine]