Combining historical research and collaborative practice, sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui reconceptualises musical instruments and performance to expand our understanding and experience of sound.
Read MoreSince 2012, Tarek Atoui has worked with Deaf and hard-of-hearing people to imagine different ways of perceiving sound, performance, and instrumentation. Under the project WITHIN, Atoui organises workshops and collaborations that explore the experience and production of sound through the construction of new instruments and performative arrangements. The project has been carried out in cities across the world, including Sharjah, U.A.E.; Berkeley and New York, U.S.A.; Karlsruhe, Germany; Bergen, Norway; and Paris, France.
With The Reverse Collection (2014–2016), Tarek Atoui approached the process of instrument-making in reverse by first recording the sounds of anthropological instruments housed in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Instrument makers and musicians were then asked to create new instruments from the recordings. The resulting 'reverse instruments' sound similar to traditional string, wind, and percussion instruments, but otherwise appear to be completely alien versions of conventional instruments.
Tarek Atoui's ongoing project I/E, initiated in 2013, records sounds from harbours and coastlines in different cities. A selection of these were presented in The Ground: From the Land to the Sea, his 2018 solo exhibition at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, which exhibited underwater and land-based recordings from Athens and Abu Dhabi. During the exhibition, he also documented sounds from the Singapore harbour with collaborator and sound artist Eric La Casa.
Tarek Atoui's work employs a diverse range of objects to generate sound. In Table of Contents (2020), tabletops are covered with objects that the audience can activate, including springs, discs, and pins. As part of March Meeting 2021, an annual gathering of art professionals hosted by Sharjah Art Foundation, Atoui's exhibition Cycles in 11 (2020) staged collaborative performances with artists-in-residence that included dropping marbles on a stretched drum skin.
Tarek Atoui studied contemporary and electronic music at the French National Conservatory in Reims, graduating with a BA in 1998. Between 2007 and 2008, he was the artistic director of STEIM, an Amsterdam-based institution for electronic music and sound art. His work has been featured in international art exhibitions including the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Marrakech Biennale 6 (2016); 8th Berlin Biennale (2014); Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); and documenta 13, Kassel (2012).
In 2020, Tarek Atoui was awarded the 2022 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize. In his 2021 interview with Ocula Magazine, the artist siad that he aims to create 'a collective work that stems from both studio and performance processes'.
Waters' Witness, Fridericianum, Kassel (2020); Organ Within, kurimanzutto, New York (2019); Resonance: Sound Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); The Ground, Mirrored Gardens/Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing (2017); The Reverse Collection, Tate Modern, London (2016); Matrix 258, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, United States (2015); The Reverse Sessions, kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2014); La Suite, Serpentine Gallery, London (2012).
Up to Now, Valletta Contemporary, Malta (2020); Yorkshire Sculpture International, The Hepworth Wakefield, United Kingdom (2019); Infinite Ear, CentroCentro, Madrid, and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2018–9); Soil and Stones, Soul and Songs, Para Site, Hong Kong (2017); Programme Ouvertures/Openings de l'Auditorium du Louvre, Paris (2013); Visiting Tarab, Performa 5, New York (2011).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
