Art Office

She who is close to the salt/sea is an investigation into the development of a handmade book describing the narrative and historical research incorporated into a film of the same name. Until now Lucy Cordes Engelman has mainly worked with moving images in the form of films, videos and installations with a strongly meditative and experimental character, in which much remains unsaid. Thanks to a growing need for text and other accompanying material, she sees this publication as an essential next step in her artistic practice. With this project, Cordes Engelman investigates the intersection where film and different forms of printing technology meet.

Water plays a central role in the artist's practice. In this particular project she gives a central role to Nehalennia, the Neolithic fertility goddess and patroness of sailors. It is only known from the large quantities of votive stones that were found on the coast of Zeeland in the seventeenth century. After thorough research in archaeological excavations, museums and visits to places of digestion, the artist will bring Nehalennia to life in a fragmented, non-linear publication and accompanying film.