Illinois College Contemporary Art Gallery

Alexandra C.: I feel like art is the one thing in this world that may save humanity. I'm from Venezuela, a country that has been torn apart for the last 20 years. I feel like my people have been screaming for help, but the world has gone deaf. This is the reason why I want to do art. Because I feel like this is the only way to save my people, my country, and any other “insignificant” country whose cries for help have been ignored by those that can actually help. I feel like art stays with people longer, it makes a bigger impact, it connects with people and makes them reflect. This is why I feel art may save us from the dreads of humanity. I want to know, what is your story? How did you find art and why did you chose to start making it? What was it about art that spoke to you louder than any other method of expression? 

 

Sigalit Landau: It is a language which is better at dealing with complex issues/situations/feelings. I don't like words. Art and dance saved my life many times. It helped me to escape into an expressive condition - avoiding facts which aren’t constructive and discovering new facts which are allegoric. 

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AC: The first piece that I came in contact with from you was “Barbed Hula”. This piece is very visceral, its very raw, its very real. I immediately felt related to this piece because of my struggles with my own body, and the things I have done to it to try to achieve any level of comfort with my own skin.  What was your thought process for this piece?

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SL: Limitations. Pain which is physical and emotional proof and legitimization of memories. boundaries.

 

AC: Could you walk me through the thought process behind the birth of this piece. Whats the story of how this piece came to be born? 

 

SL: I lived in Berlin. I was not happy when I thought of this idea, history creeps into you through place. Then an important German curator invited me to Israel, I told him of this idea. It was not interesting to him. I wished him best for the show he was curating in Jerusalem. On my way back to Berlin, to the airport; I shot the film. My gallery in Berlin (a very big one, back then) didn't like the unedited materials. I left Berlin and the works footage for more then a year. It was Shot in 1998. Edited in 2000. Shown first in 2001. 

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AC: I have noticed that you have used a wide range of mediums. From sketches, to sculptures, to installation pieces, multimedia, and even a scope of different objects that had been put in the middle of the dead sea to collect salt.  What is your favorite medium to work with? 

 

SL: I am fluent with video, love bronze, worship the craft of marble carving, must weld now and again, ignited by the fire water and crystals of the dead sea and trying hard to go back to drawing and painting. It is a question impossible to answer ... my body and soul lead me into - what today? 

 

AC: I suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder which leads me to be extremely intolerable of my own body. And I see that in a lot of your work you are in the nude. How did you accomplish this level of self-love and self confidence through vulnerability? 

 

SL: I am at peace with few things in the world, and since I was a child, my health is far from perfect - but I believe in my body as healer of my soul, which is not so strange for someone who was in classical and other serious dance training as a child and youth. I worked as a drawing and sculpture model. So there is an art, come nature in the body too.

 

 

AC: To me the entire gallery of “Infinite Solutions” is simply breath-taking, its absolutely captivating. If I had to choose my favorite piece I would be torn between “The Tally Archive Peacock, “Cry Boy Cry”and “Ectopic Pregnancy”. As an artist/creator what is your favorite piece that you have created so far? Why?. If you were a viewer walking through a gallery with all of your pieces, which one do you think would be your favorite? 

 

SL: Thank you Alexandra! My favorite sculpture is “cry boy cry” 

  

AC: In my contemporary art class the main concept we learned this semester is that the main goal of art is to dissect human condition. Do you feel like this is something you seek to do when you make art? How do you feel like you achieve this?

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SL: I feel like the human condition

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AC: I have noticed that you work a lot with the human body. Why do you think that the human body makes such a good medium? 

SL: Because it is all we have, in the beginning and in the end. I will risk saying that it is the only thing which is really “in common... “ beautiful and vulnerable, the rest is culture.