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Nava Sevilla-Sadeh
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2021.05.009
Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Sigalit Landau is an international sculpture, video, installation, and performance artist, born in Jerusalem, and raised also in the USA and the UK. The infernal main space in her installation “The Dining Hall” (2007, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin) is filled with images resembling human remains engaged in riotous consumption from huge iron pots, in physical circus-like tricks, and copulation, surrounded by huge fleshy-like constructions. While the immediate association may be that of an apocalyptic catastrophe in relation to the Holocaust, the reference is multifaceted, as this study seeks to show. There is a strong connotation of corporeality, gluttony, digestion, decay, and abjection combined with licentiousness, and a proximity between death and pleasure. This multiplicity of contexts is embedded in the term décadence, in its connection with Antiquity and mostly with ancient Rome, and calls to mind the Roman Menippean 1st century CE text Satyricon by Petronius. A comparative analysis of Landau’s installation in relation to Satyricon opens up the way to a broad interpretation, revealing much topical and conceptual parallelism that reveals Landau’s engagement with a kind of decadence typical to the contemporary condition and that of Israel in particular. A prominent feature of her installation is that of victimhood and its influence on the Israeli occupation policy and conduct. Consequently, Landau’s installation is interpreted here as an allegory of a particular state of mind, reflecting both decadence and victimhood.
classical reception studies, abjection, panem et circenses, decadence, victimhood, holocaust, Israeli occupation policy
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