Naama Tsabar
1982, Tel-Aviv (Israel)
Lives and works in New York (United States)
Stranger, 2017
Digital video
16:9, colour, sound
11 minutes 34 seconds
Gift from Fonds Artis–Amis du Centre Pompidou, 2022
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d'art moderne / Centre de création industrielle (Mnam / Cci)
AM 2022-667
Trained as a child on piano and guitar, and having played in a number of punk bands, Naama Tsabar focuses on analysing and deconstructing the codes of amplified music and the power structures at work within it. Working from a strong feminist perspective, she is particularly interested in the visual and aural culture of rock and the gender stereotypes associated with this predominantly male music scene.
Stranger takes as its starting point an instrument created by the artist: a double electric guitar, consisting of two instruments connected back to back, which can be used by two performers. The performers are not placed in a position of authority – as is the dominant and solitary image of the guitarist on stage at a rock concert – but in a closeness necessitated by the very shape of the instrument, which forces its players into a constant negotiation. Initially showing the artist playing this counter-intuitive instrument alone, the video then focuses on the four hands that activate it, leaving in turn her collaborator, the musician and sound engineer Kristin Mueller, alone. The mirroring effect of the brushed metal on the instrument is echoed in the positions of the performers' bodies, facing each other, intermingled, pushing one way and then another, at times seeming to merge into a single person, always with their backs to the audience.