Born in Tel Aviv in 1982, Naama Tsabar earned a Bachelor of Education from Hamidrasha School of Arts, Beit-Berl, Israel, in 2004, and an MFA from Columbia University, New York, in 2010. In her sculptures, performances, and installations, Tsabar examines the behavioral codes and power structures embedded in the culture of popular music. Her hybrid artworks often function dually as sculptures and instruments. Made in muted colors using industrial materials like plywood, felt, and paper, these pieces bring to mind Post-Minimalist art of the 1970s. But, as Tsabar incorporates guitar strings, tuners, microphones, and speakers, abstract formalism gives way to the dynamism of live performance. To activate her installations, the artist works predominantly with women and gender nonconforming musicians. Making music that ranges from experimental noise to more conventional forms of songwriting, Tsabar and her collaborators engage the complex relationships between bodies, space, sexual difference, and identity as they infuse seemingly neutral objects with a distinctly feminist sensibility. In order to function musically, Tsabar’s works require active, even intimate, physical engagement, which imbues her performances with a palpable sense of psychological and emotional tension. In Untitled (Double Face) (2010/14), Tsabar conjoins two electric guitars so that they can only be played through a mutual negotiation by two performers. For Work on Felt (Variation 3) (2014), three performers generate sound by beating, stroking, or plucking a pair of taut piano strings attached to either end of a large felt panel. Variation 4 (2015), also from the Work on Felt series, is Tsabar’s first wall-mounted performative sculpture. The work engages with the traditional spatial relationship between an art object and its viewer, yet it is only considered complete when activated by the artist, her collaborators, or the public. In 2014, Tsabar was featured in the Guggenheim’s performance series “Performance at the Guggenheim: Blood Makes Noise.” She has had solo exhibitions and performances at venues including Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2006); MoMA PS1, New York (2010); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2010, 2013); the High Line, New York (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017); and Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2018). Tsabar’s work has also been included in group exhibitions such as the Bucharest Biennial (2008); A New Way of Seeing, Städtische Galerie Bremen, Germany (2008); Greater New York, MoMA PS1 (2010); The Chicago Triangle, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2014); Point of Contact, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2015); How To Tell If Your Krill Oil Supplements Are Ripping You Off, Abrons Art Center, New York (2015); Sonic Arcade, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2017); and Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans (2017). Tsabar lives and works in New York.