Tarek Atoui: Inner Garden, installation view at Space 2, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, started from March 2025.

 

Inner Garden is a new sound composition created by Tarek Atoui that brings together instruments from two of his ongoing, long-term research projects: The Ground (2015-ongoing) and The Harvesters (2021-ongoing).

 

The Ground Septet 

The Ground Septet explores principles of rotation and vibration, as well as the circulation of water, through seven instruments specifically created for The Ground: The Connected Ponds, The Duofluctus, The Spin, The Spin Collector, The Spin Library, The Trichord and The Wooden Drone. These instruments, arranged in a specific order and set in motion by a computer program create at the same time the composition and a listening space.

Conceived in 2023, The Ground Septet is a recent development of The Ground, an ongoing project initiated by Tarek Atoui in 2011, that started with five years of research on practices of architecture, traditional music and agriculture in the Pearl River Delta in China. This knowledge inspired ideas on how to work with rhythm, improvisation and space, and was later combined with the experimentations of instrument-makers and musicians in the form of sound compositions that the audience can visit and listen to, as well as workshops and performances.

For The Ground Tarek Atoui built on the initial research to develop collaborations with instrument and ceramic makers, and musicians, for the realization of new instruments that were first presented in the exhibitions The Reverse Collection at Tate Modern in London in 2016, and Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs at Para/Site in Hong Kong in 2017. A further phase of experimentation and performances followed at Mirrored Gardens in Guangzhou in 2017, and in the context of the exhibition The Ground: From the Land to the Sea, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2018. The composition The Ground was finalized in 2019 and presented as part of May You Live in Interesting Times at the 58th Venice Biennale. It has since been presented in the exhibitions Cycles in 11 at the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2020, and in Ouvertures at the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce in Paris in 2021.

 

The Harvesters – Hanging Structures 1 to 4 

The Harvesters is the most recent and still-developing research project undertaken by Tarek Atoui in East Asia. It takes for point of departure the traditional sheng, a wind instrument also known as mouth organ and found across East Asia from Vietnam to Japan. For Tarek Atoui, the sheng came to symbolise the circulation of ideas through different cultures and materials. Since starting his research in 2021, Atoui has assembled a collection of shengs ranging from simple versions made with dried gourd in Vietnam or Thailand, to more elaborate ones made of wood or metal from China, South Korea and Japan.

In The Harvesters the wind used to play the shengs is carried through bamboo pipes, a material common to many cultures around the world where it is associated with wind instruments. In this series of instruments, bamboo becomes the link between different cultures.

Tarek Atoui first conceived The Harvesters in the context of the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai in 2023 as a composition, and listening and performance space based on research initiated in 2021 on irrigation systems and traditional wind instruments from Thailand.

The project further developed in 2024 around the area of Mirrored Gardens in Guangzhou where Tarek Atoui worked with a bamboo master on various bamboo structures, and expended his research on shengs to include instruments from China, South Korea and Japan, which lead to the development of a series of hanging structures.

The hanging structures are made of a single bamboo pipe that can be suspended in the air or hung against a wall. Each structure carries a sheng set at a specific tone and played with a simple blowing motor controlled by a computer program. In the context of Inner Garden at Mirrored Gardens, four of these hanging structures have been realized, each carrying a sheng from different cultures that are played together in a composition created by Atoui.

The project is still developing with further research being carried out with instrument-makers and musicians on the various traditions of shengs in East Asia, and with the bamboo master to experiment on new structures.

 

Artist’s Biography

Tarek Atoui is a musician, composer and sound artist. He initiates multidisciplinary interventions, concerts, performances and workshops around the world. His projects are grounded in extensive research into the history of music and instrumentation, while also exploring new methods of composition. Over the past years, Atoui has researched the relationships between sound, vibrations, instruments and the body, starting with how sound is perceived in Deaf culture. He challenges, expands and revises our established and conventional ways of experiencing sound, while developing a permanent reflection on the concept of the instrument and the act of performance itself as a complex, open and dynamic process.

Inner Garden was first presented at The Forest Festival, Okayama, Japan, in 2024.

The Ground and The Harvesters are part of a series of long-term research projects undertaken by Tarek Atoui over the past decade: WITHIN (2013-ongoing), The Reverse Collection (2014-2021), The Rain (2019-ongoing), Waters’ Witness (2020-ongoing) and The Whisperers (2021-ongoing).

About the Artist >>

 

 

Tarek Atoui: Inner Garden, installation view at Space 2, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou,
started from March 2025.
Photographer: Wen Peng.
Courtesy of the Artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

 

 

Vitamin Creative Space

Tarek Atoui: Inner Garden

Dates
From March 2025

Venue
Mirrored Gardens, Space 2

Address
Hualong Agriculture Grand View Garden, Panyu, Guangzhou

Daily Opening Hours
Wednesday to Sunday, 1 to 5pm (closed on Monday and Tuesday)

Hours may vary on holidays or in special circumstances. Please check our WeChat Public Account or website for the latest updates.

Please make an appointment to visit the exhibition via the official website of Mirrored Gardens.

Website: mirroredgardens.art
WeChat: mirroredgardens
Tel: +86 20-31043759
Contact: mail@mirroredgardens.art
Press: PR@vitamincreativespace.com