Hyundai Motor fills Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with 'soundscapes' in Tarek Atoui exhibition

Hyundai Motor announced Tuesday that "Hyundai Commission: Tarek Atoui: Hold," the 11th exhibition in its long-term partnership with Tate in the United Kingdom, has opened.

The Hyundai Commission is an annual series staged in the Turbine Hall — Tate Modern's vast main gallery — under a partnership between Hyundai Motor and Tate that began in 2014, with a new work commissioned each year.

The series has rotated through a different artist every year since Abraham Cruzvillegas inaugurated it in 2015; Tarek Atoui is the 11th. The exhibition runs from Tuesday (local time) through April 11, 2027, at Tate Modern in London.

Atoui is an artist and composer born in Beirut, Lebanon, who is based in Paris. He has spent years researching traditional instruments and music from around the world, building instruments himself and creating installations and performances that invite audiences to experience sound not just through hearing but through the entire body.

For this exhibition, Atoui focused on the Turbine Hall's soaring ceilings, expansive floor space, and the way sound reverberates and spreads through it. Wind and percussion instruments he made or reinterpreted — alongside sculptural works — offer a multisensory experience encompassing airflow, vibration and movement, with the pieces operating together like a single orchestra to fill the space with a continuous soundscape.

The exhibition draws on the artist's memories of places where people gathered and rested — vine-covered awnings, intimate courtyards. Stone arrangements evoking percussive instruments invite visitors to linger, sit or lie down inside the work and absorb its sounds and spatial qualities, transforming the Turbine Hall into a site of encounter and exchange.

The show also draws on more than two decades of experimentation and inquiry Atoui has conducted with musicians, instrument makers, engineers and researchers across Asia and Europe. He has reinterpreted the sheng — a traditional wind instrument originating in China and Southeast Asia — the Korean traditional drum buk, and the karnay, a ceremonial brass instrument from Uzbekistan, combining each with electronic sound systems.

Entering the Turbine Hall, visitors encounter a karnay placed on a ramp alongside two reinterpreted horn forms. Deeper inside, sheng instruments and bamboo structures frame an installation of drumheads, gongs, horns, stones and a 20-meter length of fabric; motors push air through the structures to generate varied sounds and movement. The fabric, coated in conductive paint, shifts with changes in the hall's airflow and humidity, sending minute electrical currents to the electronic sound system and producing an ever-changing low-frequency tone.

Microphones embedded throughout the hall capture sounds from the instruments and from inside and outside the Turbine Hall, feeding them back into the work so that the soundscape shifts continuously over the course of the exhibition.

In keeping with Atoui's improvisational approach, live performances that treat the entire Turbine Hall as a single acoustic system will be held regularly. Performers and electronic music artists will take part, presenting work by musicians who have collaborated with Atoui over many years and creating opportunities for new collaborations. The exhibition is curated by Nabila Abdel Nabi, senior curator of international art at Tate Modern, and Dina Akhmadeeva, curator of international art.

A Hyundai Motor spokesperson said "Hyundai Commission: Tarek Atoui: Hold" connects different cultures and communities through sound, adding that Atoui's work — grounded in collaboration and multisensory experience — "opens up possibilities for meaningful exchange and new conversations about our time."

Hyundai Motor has extended its partnership with Tate through 2036. The company also supports the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, established in 2019 alongside the Hyundai Commission, which helps Tate develop exhibitions and programs that reflect diverse art histories from a global perspective.

Hyundai Motor is also active in cultural and arts support through its Hyundai Translocal Series partnership, launched in 2025, which brings together domestic and international arts institutions for joint research, new commissions and exhibitions. The company is currently presenting "Hyundai Translocal Series: Ho Tzu Nyen" at the New Museum in New York. The New Museum and Ulsan Art Museum — the second pair of partner institutions in the series — plan to co-organize three joint exhibitions in total, once a year through 2028.