NAAMA TSABAR Israel, b. 1982

Tsabar creates sensually driven installations, performances, and sculptures that examine the charged spaces and multi sensory zones of nightlife and their associations with notions such as freedom, excess, and escape. Her work treats the venues themselves as structures of power, enabling a display of fantasy, sexuality, and bravado, as well as providing a shelter from the realities of the outside world. Addressing the implicit gender roles and coded behavior of music and nightlife, Tsabar appropriates and subverts the aggressive gestures of rock and roll and their associations with virility and power. Informed by her experiences as a musician in a punk band and as a bartender, Tsabar probes the culture of rock music from multiple angles, channeling the decadence of urban night culture and its association with danger, seduction, and subversion.

Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) 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; Museum of Art and Design, New York; The High Line Art, New York; Nasher Museum, Durham, NC; Kunsthuas 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; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York; Paramo Gallery, Guadalajara; Dvir Gallery, Israel; Spinello Projects, Miami. Selected group exhibitions include Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Elevation 1049 Gstaad, Switzerland; Goodman Gallery, South Africa; 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, New York; Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg; ExtraCity, 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 Los Angeles County Museum of Art,  Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kadist Collection, Jimenez-Colón Collection, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel Museum, and Coleccion Dieresis. Tsabar lives and works in New York.