Tarek Atoui Opens Hold in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, Turning the Cavernous Space Into a Giant Sound Instrument

The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has hosted slides, suns and cracks in the floor. From 13 October it is hosting a musical instrument the size of a building. Lebanese sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui's Hyundai Commission, Hold, is free to visit until 11 April 2027, according to Tate.

It is the 11th commission in the series, and the most sound-focused work in the hall since Bruce Nauman's Raw Materials in 2004, The Art Newspaper writes.

What will visitors see and hear?

Atoui, who was born in Beirut in 1980 and lives in Paris, builds custom instruments that double as sculptures and are played through touch, breath and motors. For Hold he treats the hall less as a cathedral than as a silo: "I see the Turbine Hall as a sound vessel."

Three horns greet visitors on the west ramp. One is a karnai from Uzbekistan; the other two were 3D-printed with Arthur Mamou-Mani's architecture office from sugar mixed with bamboo dust. Stretchable washi and cotton fabric, developed with Issey Miyake, hangs from ceiling to floor. It is painted with charcoal paint and carries low-voltage electricity, which drives synthesiser bass and also responds to the air currents in the room.

What are the sunflowers?

Modular percussion units called sunflowers, made of ceramic, clay, drum skins and brass, each carry microphones. They capture sounds in the space, including visitors' voices, and feed them into looping software that Atoui wrote himself. The result is a piece that listens as well as plays.