Naama Tsabar's Berlin Exhibition Features Deviant Instruments and Feminist Improvisation
In March, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin will host Naama Tsabar's inaugural solo exhibition in Germany, which will be on display until September 22. The artist, originally from Tel Aviv, designs sculptures and architectural interventions that function as experimental musical instruments, subverting traditional sensory hierarchies found in museums. Her work highlights the underrepresentation of women in music and reimagines existing instruments. The exhibition showcases five distinct bodies of work, including the Melodies of Certain Damage series (2018–), where guitars are smashed and chance operations inspired by John Cage are employed. Tsabar will form a temporary band with local musicians, honoring the legacy of the Feminist Improvising Group (1977–82). Interactive pieces like Inversions (2020–) and Felt (2012–) will also be featured, culminating in a performance at the opening.
Key facts
- Naama Tsabar's first institutional solo exhibition in Germany opens at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in March.
- The exhibition runs through 22 September.
- Tsabar creates sculptures and architectural interventions that function as musical instruments, inviting gallerygoers to activate them.
- Her work challenges historical museum prohibitions on touch, which emerged in the nineteenth century.
- She subverts violences in music, including the marginalization of women musicians and devaluation of supportive labor.
- The Melodies of Certain Damage series (2018–) involves smashing electric guitars and restringing the fragments, using chance operations inspired by John Cage.
- Tsabar will organize a temporary band with collaborators Lindsay Powell and Sarah Strauss and local women and non-binary performers at the exhibition.
- Inversions (2020–) are holes cut into museum walls, lined with red maple and fitted with microphones or strings, referencing Gordon Matta-Clark's building cuts.
Entities
Artists
- Naama Tsabar
- John Cage
- Gustav Metzger
- Raphael Montañez Ortiz
- Nam June Paik
- Gordon Matta-Clark
- Robert Morris
- Jack Halberstam
- Rose Blanshei
- Wolf Weston
- Lindsay Powell
- Sarah Strauss
- Josh Kline
- Pete Townshend
- Fran Landesman
Institutions
- Hamburger Bahnhof
- Bass Museum
- Kasmin
- Shulamit Nazarian
- Feminist Improvising Group
- Destruction in Art Symposium
Locations
- Berlin
- Germany
- Miami Beach
- United States
- Brooklyn
- New York
- Los Angeles
- California
- Tel Aviv
- Israel
- London
- United Kingdom