Tirtzah Bassel (b. 1979) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn. Her figurative paintings and site-responsive installations draw attention to the presumed neutrality of ubiquitous spaces like airports and supermarkets, and Canon in Drag – a series of paintings in the style of iconic artworks – subverts the authority of canonical images through gender flipping and altered narratives.  

Solo exhibitions and site responsive installations include Slag Gallery, NY (2022, 2018, 2014),  Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany (2018), Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2018), and BRIC Arts Media Center, Brooklyn, NY (2016). Recent projects include Platform in partnership with David Zwirner Gallery (2022), Natasha Arselan Gallery, London, UK (2022), and Martha’s Contemporary, Austin TX (2022).

Selected group exhibitions include Kunstverein Viernheim, Germany (2017), Home Land Security organized by the FOR-SITE Foundation, California (2018), The Visual Arts Center, New Jersey (2015), and Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn (2015). 

Bassel’s work has been reviewed in Frieze Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Boston Globe, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, The Art Newspaper, Huffington Post, Arts in Bushwick, Le Monde Diplomatique, Artspiel, Lilith Magazine, Al Jazeera English, and BBC Radio 4: Front Row among others. 

Bassel received an MFA from Boston University and studied drawing and painting at the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel. She is a faculty member in the Visual and Critical Studies Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a resident artist in the Chashama Workspace Program in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Bassel is represented by Slag Gallery in New York.