Sigalit Landau

Holes Roles Pillars and Poles, 2013

Memory Art 7, Ostia Antica Synagogue, Ostia Antica 

white marble ‘Bianco di Carrara’, Marble cylinders: 14 pieces.
228 × 60 × 96 cm
 

The work is a marble sculpture, ideologically and formatively based on an ancient method of transporting heavy loads. It is positioned amidst the ruins of the synagogue in the neighborhood of Ostia, Rome.

 

In this work, the transported body is a perforated object, one that is lacking pieces of itself. Cylinders drilled out from the substance were placed at its foot, enabling movement and transportation. Thus, they illustrated the notion of transitioning a material through time and space. The loss of form is a dramatic one: Each void is a consistent reminder of the continuum of movement. I sought to create a chronology of the self, its sacrifices and its memories. 

 

I had drilled the marble cylinders in the Lizzatura tradition; this is a term that originated in Carrara, Italy, and it describes the ancient Egyptian method of transporting large objects.

 

Another idea that was essential to the making of this piece is that of motion as an elementary quality of the living body. I tried to transform an inanimate substance into a living thing, by reducing its mass and creating an absence. That very reduction, paradoxically, enables movement and perpetuates the circle of life. The physical absence is also an ontological one; the lack, as psychoanalytic theories argue, gives birth to passion. Passion, in turn, triggers motion. In order to desire, we must lose something first.

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