Tate has named Tarek Atoui as the next artist to take on the Hyundai Commission, with a new large-scale work set to unfold across the Turbine Hall from 13 October 2026 to 11 April 2027. Supported by Hyundai Motor Company, the commission will be the eleventh in the annual series that has steadily redefined how contemporary art occupies one of the world’s most scrutinised public spaces.
Atoui, an artist and composer born in Beirut in 1980 and now based in Paris, is known for a practice that treats sound as something physical, social and spatial. His work draws on research into music history, instrumentation and modes of production, but it rarely stays within conventional boundaries. Instead, he builds complex environments where listening becomes an embodied experience.
Atoui’s practice incorporates the creation of custom-made instruments, developed in close collaboration with artists, composers and specialist makers. These objects, incorporating glass, ceramics, water and other organic materials, are somewhere between sculpture and tool. Activated through touch, breath, motors, or vibration, they generate layered sound composed of environmental recordings and digitally produced elements. The result is immersive, often collective, and deliberately resistant to passive consumption. For Atoui, sound is not just heard; it is felt, seen and navigated.
Catherine Wood, Interim Director of Tate Modern, notes that Atoui’s work moves fluidly across disciplines. His installations combine music, technology, sculpture and performance, while remaining sharply attuned to social and political contexts.
The Turbine Hall’s cavernous architecture offers an ideal testing ground for his ongoing interest in vibration, resonance and how bodies gather around sound. Atoui’s approach aligns closely with the commission’s emphasis on experimentation and public encounter. Art Director DooEun Choi describes his work as a form of sound sculpture—one that binds instruments, space and audience into a shared sensory situation, inviting reflection on contemporary life through collective experience.
Since its launch in 2014, the Hyundai Commission has drawn more than 19 million visitors and has become a defining feature of Tate Modern’s programme. Each year, an artist is invited to rethink what contemporary art can be at a monumental scale, and in full view of a global public. The long-term partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor Company, recently extended to 2036, remains the longest initial corporate commitment in the institution’s history—a sustained investment in artistic risk, ambition and access.
Atoui’s commission promises to continue that lineage, offering a Turbine Hall encounter in which sound becomes architecture, the instrument becomes sculpture, and listening is anything but passive.
Atoui received a BA in sound art and electro-acoustic music from the French National Conservatory of Reims, France. In 1998. He has exhibited and presented performances at major institutions globally, including at TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Madrid, Spain (2025); HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy (2025); S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2023); the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal (2022 and 2018); Bourse du Commerce- Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2021); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2020); the 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Tate Modern, London (2016); Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2012); and dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012). His work is held in prestigious international collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; the Saradar Collection, Beirut, Lebanon; the Tate, London, UK; and the Pinault Collection, Paris, France. He was awarded the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize in 2022.
