The immediate reference that marks the viewer is to religion. The powerful image of a naked Sigalit Landau doing the hula-hoop with a piece of barbed wire on an Israeli beach refers to the sacrificial practices dating back to the origins of religions: rituals, stigmata, propitiations, indelible markings. The Israeli-born artist and performance artist works with the lineage of 1960s and 1970s ceremonial-cathartic Body Art as practiced by Marina Abramovic, Gina Pane or the Vienna actionists; the representation of the body profaned, perhaps violently, as a possible expiation for the corruption of contemporary society. But with Sigalit Landau, the pathos inherent in the forms of her elders is here held back by the subversive linking of two antagonistic themes: the profane, rock’n’roll dancing; and the sacred, the icon of sacrifice… Sigalit Landau enjoys mixing the painful and the sublime, the graceful and the sordid, naturalism and modernist chaos. (Guillaume Desanges)
Landau says, "The seashore is the only calm and natural border Israel has. This belly dance is a personal and senso-political act concerning invisible sub-skin borders, surrounding the body and identity actively and endlessly."
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