December 22, 2018 – February 9, 2019
Opening: Saturday, December 22, 7–10 pm Opening Night Performances: 7 – 7:40 pm and 8:15 – 8:50 pm
Artist Talk: Monday, December 24, 8 pm Performances: Monday, December 24, 7 pm | 9:15 pm, Wednesday, December 26, 6 pm
The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv presents Naama Tsabar’s newest large-scale installation, which transforms the entire gallery space into a site-specific sculptural and sonic installation. The installation is comprised of shattered guitars, sprawled on the floor, each restrung to create a collective of sculptures that renders the lower floor into a massive, room-sized instrument. Visitors can play this unique creation, as well as attend special performances by female-identified and gender non-conforming performers (Rotem Frimer, Nina Loeterman, Maya Perry, Sarah Strauss and Moran Victoria Sabbag) that will take place during the run of the exhibition.
Naama Tsabar creates sensually driven installations, performances, and sculptures that evoke questions of power and bravado found in musical and social environments. Her work investigates intimacy, performativity, sexuality, and excess with minimalist aesthetics. Throughout her practice, Tsabar repeatedly returns to the iconic act of breaking the guitar. In her newest series of large-scale installations, titled “Melodies of Certain Damage,” broken guitars are scattered about the gallery. Strings are reattached to the musical “debris” in an unconventional way, creating a constellation of resynthesized instruments – a phoenix rising from the wreckage.
Tsabar’s striking floor-bound installation imposes a unique configuration between instrument and body. To play the instruments-cum-installation, visitors must lay on the floor next to the pieces, or find other positions with which to interact with the work. Such a choreography engenders a vulnerability within visitors or performers, generating a new kind of intimacy between the instrument and its activator. Transforming the remains of the iconic action of breaking a guitar into a new functioning order in many ways undermines its historic gendered manifestation in Rock ‘n’ Roll. The image of the male rock star, able freely to express anger and rebellion, and to impose violence, has become almost paradigmatic today. By maintaining the composition of the guitars as they originally fractured when broken, Tsabar focuses on the aftermath of the violence, the debris. Transforming the remains, perhaps even the victims of violence, into a new and beautiful landscape is an empowering female act. For this reason, Tsabar chose to collaborate and empower musicians who identify as female and gender non-binary. She will work with them to compose a space-specific performance. Tickets are available on the CCA website. Visitors are also permitted to play the works through the run of the exhibition.
“Naama Tsabar: Melody of Certain Damage (Opus 3)” is curated by Chen Tamir. The exhibition is supported by Thomas Rom, Shulamit Nazarian, OUTSET Israel, and the Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts. Additional support has been provided by Giora Kaplan and Marc Schimmel. Special thanks to Noor and Dalton Winery. A forthcoming publication, edited by Chen Tamir and produced by CCA Tel Aviv in collaboration with Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel and Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires, will be published in 2019.
Image: Naama Tsabar, “Melody of Certain Damage (Opus 3)” 2018. View of the exhibition at CCA Tel Aviv. Photo: Eyal Agivayev.
