Naama Tsabar

Naama Tsabar’s practice fuses elements from sculpture, music, performance, and architecture. Her interactive works expose hidden spaces and systems, reconceive gendered narratives, and shift the viewing experience to one of active participation.

Tsabar draws attention to the muted and unseen by propagating sound through space and sculptural form. Between sculpture and instrument, form and sound, Tsabar’s work lingers on the intimate, sensual and corporeal potentials within this transitional state. Collaborating with local communities of female identifying and gender non-conforming performers, Tsabar writes a new feminist and queer history of mastery.

Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel; Lives and works in New York, NY) received her MFA from Columbia University in 2010. Solo exhibitions and performances of Tsabar have been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Bass Museum (Miami), Museum of Art and Design (New York), The High Line (New York), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Connecticut), Nasher Museum (Durham, NC), Kunsthaus Baselland (Switzerland), Palais De Tokyo (Paris), Prospect New Orleans, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Herziliya Museum for Contemporary Art in Israel, MARTE-C (El Salvador), CCA Tel Aviv (Israel), Faena Buenos Aires, Frieze Projects New York, Kasmin Gallery (New York), Paramo Gallery (Guadalajara), Dvir Gallery (Israel and Brussels), Spinello Projects (Miami), Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles). Selected group exhibitions featuring Tsabar’s work include The Andy Warhol Museum (New York), The Jewish Museum of Belgium, Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), Ballroom Marfa, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Elevation 1049 Gstaad (Switzerland), TM Triennale, Hasselt Genk Belgium, ‘Greater New York’ 2010 at MoMA PS1, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium), The Bucharest Biennale for Young Artists, Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), ExtraCity in Antwerp (Belgium).

Tsabar’s work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art In America, ArtReview, ARTnews, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Frieze, Bomb Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Wire, and Whitewall, among others. Tsabar is a two-time recipient of an Artis Grant, 2014 and 2010; a two-time recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Grant, 2009 and 2005; the 2009-2010 recipient of the Joan Sovern Award from Columbia University; 2012 Grantee of The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award; and held residency in 2012 at The Fountainhead Residency in Miami.

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A4 Arts Foundation, Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Bass Museum, Kadist Collection, Jimenez-Colón Collection, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel Museum, and Coleccion Dieresis.

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Inaugurating its new Hollywood location, Shulamit Nazarian presents Escape Attempts, a group exhibition of seven international artists working in dialogue with the legacy of minimal art. Carmen Argote, Susan Hefuna, Cindy Hinant, Alex McQuilkin, Sarah Meyohas, Virginia Overton, and Naama Tsabar present work that both acknowledges and subverts the practice of their predominately male forebears including Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd, and Larry Bell.

The artists in Escape Attempts employ the formal elements associated with Minimalism. Reduced color palettes and the repetition of simple geometric forms, as well as industrial materials that have a symbiotic relationship to architecture, create new mash-ups that mix formal rigor with sensuality, subjectivity, personal narrative, and contemporary sexual politics.