Naama Tsabar Work on Felt (Variation 8), Dark Blue 2020
© Naama Tsabar Studio
Naama Tsabar makes performances, installations, and sculptures exploring the relationship of power, social structures, and sound. Informed by rock culture, Minimalism, and Joseph Beuys’s ideas on social sculpture, her sculptures consist of geometric shapes that produce sound while encouraging movement and direct engagement. Tsabar collaborates with musicians and audience members to generate sound for her works, aiming to shift the relationship between the art and the viewer. Working with female or gender nonconforming musicians, she often creates performances using her instruments, converting gallery spaces into live concerts.
Tsabar’s series Works on Felt evokes nocturnal environments. She uses dark as a means of referencing the classical conception of the nocturne in music. Work on Felt (Variation 8) is a wall-mounted, dark-blue sculpture with a piano string attached to a guitar-tuning peg. The work has an amplifier that enhances the sound. In museum galleries, it can either be observed or activated. Work on Felt (Variation 8) proposes a series of different engagements with viewing audiences: as a traditional work of art, a live instrument, and a musical performance with the artist.
Identification
Title
Work on Felt (Variation 8), Dark Blue
Production Date
2020
Object Number
2020.086
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council with additional contributions provided by Karen Bechtel, Evelio and Lorena Gomez, Jorge M. Pérez, and Craig Robins
Copyright
© Naama Tsabar Studio
https://live-pamm-dot-org.pantheonsite.io/en/artwork/2020.086
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Felt, carbon fiber, epoxy, wood, guitar tuning peg, piano string, contact microphone, and amplifier
Dimensions
75 x 65 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches
Visual Description
Work on Felt (Variation 8) Dark Blue by artist Naama Tsabar is an installation made of felt and musical instrument parts made in 2020. Part of it is hung on the wall and the rest of it sits on the floor. It measures roughly six and half by five and a half by three feet. This artwork is an example of conceptual sculptures, which is a three-dimensional style of art that focuses more on the idea/concept presented by the artist. A very large, rectangular, blue piece of felt fabric is hung on the wall with the shorter side parallel to the floor. There is a slit on the felt that appears to have been cut. The cut starts from the bottom center and climbs up slightly past two-thirds of the rectangle. The bottom inside corners that the slit created are being pulled forward by a string. One string is tied at the bottom inside left corner and is attached to the top left corner. The second string is tied at the bottom inside right corner and is attached to the top right corner. By tying the corners together, the flaps created by the slit become suspended in the air. Coming from somewhere behind the blue felt, on the left side, there is an electronic cord hiding and emerging from the bottom of the felt, it reaches the floor and then crawls to the left, connecting to a large speaker. The gray speaker has a cube like shape and is placed against the wall.
