An artist buried a dress right inside the red sea for as many as three months and brought it out again only to see a totally different thing.
In 2014, Israeli artist Sigalit Landau submerged a 19th century-style gown into the lifeless waters of the Dead Sea, for a unique photo project.
The dress was retrieved after three months, and as you can see in the photos below, the transformation is quite significant.
The dress when it was first submerged
For her latest project, an eight-part photo series called Salt Bride, Landau checked in on the dress multiple times over the three month period, capturing its slow transformation into a magical salt crystal.
As the salt in the water adhered to the fabric, the black dress gradually became stiffer and changed its color from charcoal black to pearly white. “It looks like snow, like sugar, like death’s embrace,” the artist poetically said in a statement.
The dress gradually changing
Sigalit Landau has been fascinated by the Dead Sea for a very long time. Growing up on a hill in Jerusalem, she would often look out on the northern banks of its waters, and visit its shores on weekends.
So it’s no wonder that the lifeless lowest place on Earth has also influenced her artistic career.
“It is like meeting with a different time system, a different logic, another planet,” the artist says.
She has been experimenting with the salt crystallization of objects in the Dead Sea for a while, and in her 2005 DeadSee artistic video, she floated naked in its waters with 500 watermelons.
The 19th century-style gown used by Laundau in the Salt Bride project is a replica of the one worn in the dramatic production of S. Ansky’s 1916 play “Dybbuk”, a classic play that inspired the artist. It tells the story of a young bride possessed by an evil spirit and subsequently exorcised. In her art, the salt symbolizes the supernatural force, invading the fabric and transforming it completely.
Sigalit Landau‘s Salt Bride is currently on display at London’s Marlborough Contemporary gallery, where art lovers will be able to admire photos of this magical Dead Sea transformation until September 3rd.
