Hamburger Bahnhof

Naama Tsabar's art overcomes the boundaries of sculpture, music, performance and architecture: Hamburger Bahnhof presents the installation and performance artist with her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The exhibition Estuaries focuses on four bodies of work with wall and floor works that also function as musical instruments and can be activated by the audience. The performance, created especially in the exhibition, is developed in close collaboration with a group of female identifying or gender non-confirming musicians and performers from Berlin and New York and will be premiered on the opening weekend.

The exhibition presents on about 420 sqm four series of over twenty works that correspond with each other both visually and sonically throughout the exhibition space. Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Yavne, Israel, lives and works in New York) reveals hidden spaces and systems in her interactive works, re-defining gendered narratives and shifting the viewing experience to a moment of active participation. The sculptures and installations at Hamburger Bahnhof can be played as instruments by the audience or in collectively developed performances. Visitors experience the intimate, sensual, physical potential of Tsabar's art in the process between sculpture and instrument, between form and sound.

The works from the series Work On Felt (2021-23) are made of felt treated with carbon fiber. They are shaped by stretching a piano string, which also turns them into a playable stringed instrument. The works in theInversion series (2019-24) are built into the exhibition walls and open up a cavity in the wall. The audience can reach into it and make it sound by striking hidden string elements, singing or moving. In the work series Melody of Certain Damage (2022), Tsabar appropriates the iconic gesture of smashing guitars at rock concerts: On the floor of the Kleihueshalle, broken guitar parts form a musical landscape of debris. Tsabar actually broke the instruments alone in her studio and documented the position of each fragment. Four of these scenarios are meticulously recreated on the exhibition floor, creating a sculptural work. By connecting the fragments with guitar and piano strings, the artist creates an instrument that can in turn be played by the audience.

Three works from her series of Shoe Metronomes (2018-23) can be found on the floor in the exhibition area of the parallel presentation of the Joseph Beuys collection. Tsabar has incorporated motorized metronomes into the shoes she wears over a certain period of time, which are set to the heartbeat of a person at rest and emit a soft, rhythmic sound. The titles of the works indicate the period of time during which Tsabar wore the shoes.

They bring a small section of the artist's lifetime into the room and imbue it with a human rhythm. For several years, the artist has also been developing performances that she composes and choreographs together with local groups of musicians and dancers who define themselves as female and non-binary in order to open up new spaces of feminist and queer history. The performances are an integral part of the exhibition and will take place on the opening weekend Friday 12 + Saturday 13 April 2024 at Hamburger Bahnhof at 7 and 8 pm (tickets: € 10; advance booking: reservix.de). Further performances are planned for September 2024. Naama Tsabar has developed a composition in the Kleihueshalle in collaboration with a group of eight performers from New York and Berlin that musically activates all of the exhibited works. The entire exhibition space will become a resonating space in which the audience can move freely around the performers.

With her use of felt, her approach to sound and her understanding of social sculpture, Tsabar refers to Joseph Beuys, whose works are being shown in the Kleihueshalle at the same time. The exhibition is the prelude to a series of contemporary presentations in dialog with the presentation of Beuys' works in the collection.

Free guided tours of the exhibition take place every fortnight on Sundays in German and English, combining a short tour with an activation of the exhibition works. Once a month, there is a guided tour on the subject of "Sound", which takes Naama Tsabar's work as a starting point to explore other works on the subject currently on display in the museum. An exhibition talk entitled "Felt and Sound" is offered for school classes, presenting the works of artist Naama Tsabar alongside works by Josef Beuys. Families have the opportunity to work on a large sound sculpture every Sunday in April as part of the Volkswagen Group Art4All Family Program.

The exhibition is curated by Ingrid Buschmann, curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.