The Bass presents ‘Perimeters’ by Naama Tsabar

Israeli born and New York based artist Naama Tsabar’s new and site specific work will be showcasing at The Bass Museum of Art. Centered on the artist’s most recent series, Inversions, ‘Perimeters’ invites visitors to engage and interact with the installations. Tsabar has fused elements from sculpture, music, performance and architecture- transforming the museum itself into an instrument. The interactive exhibition, curated by ,strong>Leilani Lynch, will run from November 28, 2021 to April 17, 2022, presenting new iterations of four bodies of work that the artist has explored since 2006.

Tsabar explores the movement of sound through and beyond walls and buildings, working at the conjunction of architecture and music. Through the exhibition the artist challenges the viewers perceptions of sound, sculpture, and the museum as a space. Tsabar’s interactive works expose hidden spaces and systems, viewers can reach into a wall or crouch on the floor to interact with the sculptural and microphone, making each experience unique and personal. The artist employs auditory and visual stimuli to shift the viewing experience from passive observation to one of active participation. By drawing attention to the muted and unseen, the artist reconceives normative gender narratives. Tsabar has collaborated with communities of female-identifying and gender non-conforming performers, to contribute to feminist and queer discourses through movement, sound and space.

The artist strings you along the exhibition, with the first artwork being born out of destruction. Tsabar’s Melody of Certain Damage works are made by smashing guitars in her studio, documenting where the pieces fall and transforming the destroyed object into a newly playable instrument. Citing iconic moments in rock performance history, as well as Auto-Destructive art, Tsabar embodies the male-dominated legacy of rock and roll. However, by creating a new instrument out of the scattered fragments the installation emphasises reconstruction and repair after trauma.

The work, October 13 2019 – July 5 2021 (2021), gives sculptural form to acts and movement performed by the artist. It consists of a pair of shoes fused with a working metronome. The shoes were worn by the artist during the fixed period of time encompassed in the title. The metronome’s steady tempo along with the shoes’ visible wear embody what the artist describes as, “a diary of time and body movement.” The even beat of the metronome recalls a clock, memorializing a record of the artist’s movements during a specific time as a type of portrait.

Twilight (Gaffer Wall) is a wall specific installation, a wall specific installation first exhibited by Tsabar in 2006, and then again in 2017. The work is a curved wall covered in strips of gaffer tape, the same tape used to mask and stabilize cables on stages and productions around the world. The utilitarian material, often associated with unseen backstage labor, moves from its functionally hidden location on the floor to a wall, where it becomes the focus as a sort of nocturnal night veil and transitional space.

Tsabar’s most recent ‘Inversions’ installations are activated by motion, rather than touch. Acoustic studies prove that the sonic power of an instrument resonates strongest at the perimeters of its opening, known as a sound hole. The sonic vocabulary emanating from these structures are derived from female vocalists, asserting the power and beauty of the female voice within the exhibition space.

‘Perimeters’ beautifully exhibits polarities- destruction/creation; absence/void, presence/occupation and singularity/collectivity. Breaking institutional barriers, the exhibition uses the pervasiveness of sound and the acoustic effect of perimeters to suggest strength at the periphery rather than at the center, to bring attention to politically-charged and timely concepts