Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin
12.04.-22.09.2024

The exhibition Estuaries in the Kleihueshalle at Hamburger Bahnhof is Naama Tsabar’s first institutional solo show in Germany. Including more than 20 wall and floor-based pieces, it focuses on four bodies of work by the installation and performance artist. Distributed across the entire exhibition space, the works relate and respond to one another both visually and acoustically. In her Work on Felt series, Tsabar uses felt to which carbon fiber has been added; by tightening a piano string attached to each piece of felt, she creates a sculptural work and simultaneously transforms it into a modifiable string instrument. The works in her Inversion series are embedded in the walls of exhibition spaces, penetrating the architectural structures and revealing their interior cavities. The audience can elicit sounds from these cavities by reaching into the openings she has made in the walls and plucking or strumming hidden string elements, speaking or singing into the space, or simply moving their body. In the series Melody of Certain Damage, Tsabar appropriates the iconic gesture of smashing a guitar; she transforms this destructive act into a sculptural work, which in turn becomes a playable musical instrument.

Naama Tsabar’s exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof is also the first in a series of temporary solo exhibitions by contemporary artists to be shown in parallel with the presentation of Joseph Beuys’s works in the Kleihueshalle.

Installation and performance photography © Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Laura Fiorio and Jacopo La Forgia