Tarek Atoui

Born in Lebanon in 1980, Tarek Atoui moved to France in 1998 where he studied economics and electroacoustic music. In 2008 he worked as artistic director at Steim in Amsterdam, a centre for the research and development of new electronic musical instruments. Currently lives in Paris.

Tarek Atoui is a musician, composer and sound artist working experimentally with custom-built electronic instruments. He initiates and curates multidisciplinary interventions, concerts, performances and workshops worldwide. These projects are based on extensive research into the history of music and instrumentation, while also exploring new methods of production.

Atoui often articulates social realities and histories in his work, while presenting sound as a powerful mode of expression and identity. Over the past years, Atoui has researched the relationships between sound, vibrations, instruments and the body, starting with how the deaf perceive sound. He challenges, expands and revises our established and conventional ways of experiencing sound, he is developing a permanent reflection on the concept of the instrument and the act of performance itself as a complex, open and dynamic process.

Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Venice Biennale in Venice(2019), the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2009 and 2013), New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2010), Mediacity Biennial in Seoul (2010), Haus Der Kunst in Munich (2010), Performa 11 in New York (2011), dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel (2012), Serpentine Gallery in London (2012), the 8th Berlin Biennial in Berlin (2014) , the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2014/2015) and Tate Modern in London (2016).

Tarek Atoui

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