Artist Sigalit Landau at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg

Ballerina Dress. Photo courtesy of the artist

Salzburg is not only about music festivals; the Austrian city is also hosting an exhibition of the incredible artwork of Sigalit Landau at the Museum der Moderne.

The Israeli sculptress, video and installation artist, Sigalit Landau, is presenting in this exhibition some of her most beautiful and poetic works; objects coated in salt crystals of the Dead Sea.

Beach by Sigalit Landau. Photo by Rainer Iglar, courtesy of the Museum der Moderne. 

She immerses the objects during months in the saltiest sea in the world until they are completely covered in crystals. The most common or threatening objects, many of them, part of the artist’s childhood memories, become incredible crystalline sculptures that seem out of a  dream.

Climb Every Mountain by Sigalit Landau. Photo by Rainer Iglar, courtesy of the Museum der Moderne. 

Sigalit Landau uses chairs, cradles, ladders, shoes, violins and tablecloths to make these moving pieces. With no doubt, the most poetic piece is the ballerina tutu dress. The Dead Sea slowly transforms these objects, through the crystallisation of salt, which can, by the way, painfully heal wounds. The crystals build bridges between the past, present and future with their sustaining and transformative power.

Litoral by Sigalit Landau. Photo by Rainer Iglar, courtesy of the Museum der Moderne. 

The sculptress explains that this process of transformation is an “analogy for love, loss and growth, for hope and for the future co-existence of the three people of Israel, Jordan and Palestine that border the Dead Sea’s shores

Watch here the artist creating her work:

The exhibition at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg also includes several video works of this contemporary artist who has already exhibited at Documenta and the Venice Biennale. You can visit this mesmerising exhibition until the 17th of November.

What better place than Salzburg, literally the salt fortress, to host the salt sculptures of Sigalit Landau?

CS