Shmaya

Sigalit Landau

Shmaya, 2016

Artwork text

The three salt objects in the Generali Foundation Collection are part of a group of works that Landau calls Chandeliers, because they look like lampshades hanging from the ceiling. Noye (2008), Mondial (2009), and Shmaya (2016) are from the installation Strand (2017). Their basic frame is made of barbed wire that is almost entirely covered by a white crust of salt, glittering like sugarcoating or shining snow crystals. These formations of light and dark appear to be purely decorative, but in the fact they are an optical trick. Transformed into their political iconography, they celebrate a fragile balance of beauty and pain. In the Old Testament (Genesis 19, 26) Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt when she defies God’s word and looks back while fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah. She does not succeed in leaving her past behind her. (Doris Leutgeb)