Art Basel | Messplatz
4058 Basel, Switzerland
Thursday, June 15th, 2023
Performances at 12pm and 5:30pm
Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to announce Naama Tsabar's participation in Art Basel 2023, contributing the performance of Untitled (Double Face) for Swiss-based artist Latifa Echakhch sprawling site-specific work for this year's Art Basel Messeplatz Project.
Curated by Samuel Leuenberger, Curator for Parcours at Art Basel, Latifa Echakhch's multiplatform, deconstructed stage for Art Basel Messeplatz takes the symbol of wreckage and ruins to uncover the hopes and possibilities contained within. The artist—who represented Switzerland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022—orchestrates the superstructure as the backdrop for a series of live concerts and performances, organized in collaboration with Luc Meier, Director of La Becque Artist Residency. The musical acts interrogate the fundamentals of sound and music-making as a shared experience between the artist and the audience. Beyond the performances, the various islands and stage settings will be available for the public to sing, recite poetry, share knowledge, or simply come to rest.
Naama Tsabar's Untitled (Double Face) series—a performance with related photographs and sculptures—coopts and upends the guitar solo through conjoining and doubling. While the rock-and-roll guitar solo has largely been interpreted as a solitary performance of bravado and mastery, Tsabar grafts two guitars together to be played in sustained parternship with a second performer, thereby repositioning the self-centered performative gesture into a collaboration hinging on intimacy and cooperation.
Sharing a back, the chromed-plated double-guitar is conjoined in a way that requires a mutual negotiation between the two performers. Moving in unision (or in tension), the performance infuses a seemingly neutral object with a sense of psychological strain. The doubling of both the guitar and the performer structures a frenetic tenderness into the act of performance, compelling the players to face one another, rather than an audience.
Naama Tsabar, Untitled #3 (from the Double Face Museum Series), 2016. Dye sublimation print, polished aluminum frame, Photograph dimensions: 41 x 51 inches.
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), and 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.
Opening in December 2023, Tsabar will be featured in a solo exhibition at Berlin’s Hamburger Banhof National Gallery of Contemporary Art.
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