Outset Israel supported artist Naama Tsabar’s newest large-scale installation Melodies of Certain Damage (Opus 3), presented at The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, curated by Chen Tamir.
Naama Tsabar (b. 1982) 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 this series of large-scale installations, titled Melodies of Certain Damage, broken guitars were scattered about the gallery. Strings were 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 imposed a unique configuration between instrument and body. To play the instruments-cum-installation, visitors must laid on the floor next to the pieces, or find other positions with which to interact with the work. Such a choreography engendered 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 focused 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 worked with them to compose a space-specific performance. Visitors were also permitted to play the works through the run of the exhibition.
ON VIEW: 21st December, 2018 - 8th February 2019
