Naama Tsabar (born 1982 in Israel, lives and works in New York) employs
sculpture,
photography, and
performance
to subvert the
gender
roles historically associated with musicianship. Appropriating and
subverting the aggressive gestures of
rock'n'roll and their associations with virility and power, Tsabar upends
the implicit gender roles and coded behavior of music and nightlife. Her
most recent works and sonic installations weave together iconic actions
and objects from rock music (the guitar, the amplifier, the microphone)
with a more intimate portrayal of the artist's body and its movement
through, within, and into the surrounding architecture. The motifs of
femininity, gender, disruption, destruction and reconstruction recur
throughout her work and performances.
Tsabar has most recently performed at ELEVATION 1049 in Gstaad,
Switzerland, in February 2019, and exhibited at the Center for
Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv in 2018, Kunsthaus Baselland in 2018, and
Prospect New Orleans in 2017 with the commissioned piece Composition 21.
Upcoming exhibitions and festivals include Big Orchestra at the Schirn
Kunsthalle Frankfurt this summer and at the Nasher Museum of Art in North
Carolina this September. Selected exhibitions and performances of Tsabar
include Faena Art Center, Buenos Aires, (2018); SoundKraft at the Museum
of Arts and Design, New York (2017-18); The Skin of Sound, Hessel Museum
of Art / CCS Bard, New York (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017); High
Line Art, New York (2016); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Tel Aviv
Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2013, 2010); Frieze Projects, New York (2014);
Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2014); MARTE-C, San Salvador
(2015); MoMA PS1, New York (2010); The Herzliya Museum for Contemporary
Art, Herzliya (2006). Tsabar received her MFA from Columbia University,
New York in 2010 and BFA from Hamidrasha School of Arts, Belt-Berl,
Israel, in 2004. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art, San Francisco; Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv; Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
