Artist Bio

Tirtzah Bassel (b. 1979) is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose figurative paintings and site-responsive installations explore the sacred in everyday gestures and ordinary spaces. Her work draws on myth, ritual, and embodied practice, while her ongoing series Canon in Drag reimagines iconic artworks through gender shifts and altered narratives.

Bassel has presented solo and site-responsive projects at A.I.R. Gallery, FOR-SITE Foundation, BRIC Arts Media House, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, SLAG&RX (New York, Paris), Galerie Thomas Fuchs (Stuttgart), Ortega y Gasset and Open Source Gallery. Group exhibitions include PLATFORM (David Zwirner Partnership), Natasha Arselan Gallery (London), Martha’s Contemporary (Austin TX) and Kunstverein Viernheim (Germany). A forthcoming group exhibition at Sheldon Museum of Art is scheduled for 2027 (forthcoming).

Her work has been featured in ARTNews, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, BBC Radio 4: Front Row, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, The Boston Globe, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, Lilith Magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Al Jazeera English.

Bassel holds an MFA from Boston University, and is represented by SLAG&RX (New York) and Galerie Thomas Fuchs (Stuttgart).

C.V. | Instagram | tirtzahbassel[at]gmail.com

Artist Statement

I am an artist making figurative paintings and site-responsive installations that find the sacred in ordinary activities: sweeping, sewing, testing a bed in an IKEA showroom, submitting to an airport pat-down, waiting in line. I also decenter the sacred within canonical narratives. In Canon in Drag, I rework iconic artworks through gender shifts and altered storylines, probing the border between sanctioned and unsanctioned power.

I grew up immersed in the rigorous practice ancient wisdom traditions alongside a strong current of DIY resistance. I was the girl who wore modest clothing but studied the books forbidden to women. That dual inheritance shapes my practice. Each morning I walk to my studio in a former factory on the Brooklyn waterfront, still humming with the memory of hands that made and shipped things. When inherited stories misalign with lived experience, I return to the body. Painting is how I trace touch and movement, letting everyday gestures open unexpected ways of seeing and being.