Sigalit Landau

The artist
Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Endless Solution, 2005 (another edition shown)

Under the DeadSee was shot in mid August 2004 in the area of Sdom south of Masada and first exhibited as part of "The Endless Solution" installation at the Helena Rubinstein pavilion, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, January-May 2005.

One of Israel's leading contemporary artists, Sigalit Landau was selected to represent Israel in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Prior to that, in 2005, she had a one person exhibition/installation at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art titled Endless Solution in which another edition of this video was exhibited.

"Landau created a remote, hostile living habitat, peopled by a Sisyphean community occupied with overcoming and surviving some undisclosed disaster, and making a new start. She transformed the huge space to simulate another place (the environs of the Dead Sea) and an indefinable period, with signs of Modernity (such as an old car, a bicycle and some machines) alluding perhaps to sometime in the mid 20^th century. The show's title, as well as other clues included in the gigantic installation, pointed to the Second World War and the Holocaust.  Layered images, laden simultaneously with local and universal meanings, both historical and contemporary, filled the space and jolted the viewer; the Dead Sea, both annihilating and purifying; images of crucifixion, sacrifice and redemption; a volcano, a bustling hive, a deadly furnace; and overhanging images of Eros, the infinite life force, overcoming Death's finiteness. The video work included in this exhibition was created for that charged installation and symbolizes infinity, the breaking of a knot, the desalination of the Dead Sea through the sweetness of watermelons, perhaps even the triumph of good over evil." (Ilan Wizgan in Territorial Bodies Contemporary Sculpture from Israel, Beelden aan Zee Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2008, p. 96).

Discussing this work the artist writes: "A cord of 250 meters penetrates 500 watermelons forming a 6 meter spiral raft in the saturated salt waters of the Dead Sea. The spiral turns as a whirlpool in reverse from its normal direction. I am floating locked inside the layers of the spiral, between the center and the periphery of the sweet raft. I am reaching out against the direction of the turning raft towards a small area where the fruit is wounded, red, and exposed, like me, to the sting of the salt. The salt solution of the Dead Sea enables everything to float. The spiral gradually becomes a thin green line abandoning the frame." (Sigalit Landau, as quoted on sigalitlandau.com)