• Issue
  • Mar 25, 2022

The Artists of 2020: Tarek Atoui

Installation view of TAREK ATOUI‘s "Waters’ Witness," at Fridericianum, Kassel, 2020. Photo by Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy Fridericianum.

Working at crossroads of music and art, Tarek Atoui is the conductor and convener of events that bring together musicians with a vast array of specialized talent, as well as the creator of unlikely musical instruments inspired by traditional forms from around the world. Continuing more than a decade of collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation and its surrounding communities, the exhibition “Cycles in 11” (9/19–4/10/21) highlighted Atoui’s practice of inventing instruments with a combination of ordinary objects like rocks or marbles, paired with mechanized or electrified elements, as part of the five-year-long project The Ground (2016–20). Atoui also conceived of “Cycles in 11” as a sound workshop and established a musical residency program for 11 composers, musicians, and other artists in the eastern coastal city of Kalba.