In the 1970s, the Amazigh (indigenous peoples of North Africa) coined the term Tamazgha, to denote their traditionally inherited lands. Spanning regions from Egypt to Morocco, Tamazgha encompasses a collective of political entities, cultural and linguistic units–an embodiment of what it means to transcend simple notions of homeland, bringing together diverse lived and felt experiences; tangible and intangible heritages. In 2025, Tarek Atoui draws upon this neologism as the epithet ascribed to the first chapter of At-Tāriq: a long-term research project of the same name, that will see a series of iterative exhibitions in ethno-musicological exploration of the Arab World’s bucolic locales. The “Tamazgha chapter” transforms the lower floor of Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza into a repository of musical and craft traditions of the Arab diaspora. Within At-Tāriq, Atoui creates five Majilis: a variably translatable Arabic word whose myriad connotations include social gatherings, administrative or political convenings, religious events and ritual activity.
The artist’s first solo show in the Spanish capital is the culmination of two years of collaboration with artists and practitioners from across Morocco's Atlas region; a manner of working that reflects the Majilis as a site of communion, entertainment, and knowledge exchange all in one. The core of the exhibition is an evocative soundscape–a track of modulated waves and phrases produced with the percussionist Susie Ibarra, musician Nancy Mounir, and the DJ-composer Ziúr during a seven-day residency in Córdoba; later expanded upon with other musicians. Alternatively melancholy, mesmeric, soporific, and buoyant, the sonic work occupies the generative space between Arabic pastoral sound, and electroacoustic innovation.
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Atoui’s collection of Majilis function as distinct listening stations, in which low-lying seats constellate rugs. There are no dividers between the stations, with the soundscape audible from each–this reflects Atoui’s conception of each station as one within a coherent, multichannel sound system. Even as the positioning of the seats orientates each person inwards, they are connected to all and the other; a reminder that to be human, is to partake in the truly collective.
Often within the institution, we encounter sonic art descended from legacies of the western canon; outpourings from a certain brand of white male artists-cum-composers, defined by minimalism and extra-musical modes. Atoui prioritises rural and heritage musical modes, as much as he does innovation–in their being given equal weight, Atoui’s soundscape becomes an act of radical reassertion. Tone and texture are layered with melody and monophony, making-audible the exhibition’s conceptual stacking of histories and geographies. The work at once flirts with and defies modes of “Western” music-making, celebrating the creativity inherent to oral traditions, improvised musical practices, and living legacies of traditional instruments and musical forms. Enfolding Arabic folk songs, myths and legends, Atoui honours the representatives of the Amazigh tradition–the “singers of a thousand verses,” who guard and pass their knowledge down generational lines.
Atoui’s soundscape emanates from elemental towers composed of instrumental vessels; sonic sculptures of clay, metal and woven yarn. Convening textiles, poetry and musical instruments made by Moroccan artisans, Atoui’s coterie of eccentric sonic sculptures platform centuries of material knowledge and craftsmanship. Raw earthen material evokes ancient vessels; coloured beads of diverse shape and size hang alongside metal entities sandblasted with intricate, biomorphic designs. Sound is made via oscillation and vibration, evidencing the musicality inherent to every single object around us. Medium and material become the source of sound itself, as the generation of friction translates into low vibrations and soaring hums.Through sensors and motors its forms come alive; the very notion of what is audible is queried, insofar as sounds become felt.
No two listening stations are the same, just as no two citizens within a culture are identical–yet all come together in formation of a common humanity and heritage. This recourse to amalgamation centres the notion of “poetic hospitality”–the role of art as a threshold for the interrogation of otherness and identity, empathy and hostility. In the vacant bellies of Atoui’s sculpture-stroke-instruments, new repertoires are created; dialogic and embodied forms of expression are fused, framing hybridity as a fundamental principle of artistic excellence. The exhibition remains in constant flux, animated and affected by the bodies that enter the space. This variability comes to metaphorise the durability and adaptivity of cultures over time–the capacity of (in this case, Arabic) traditions and mores to endure shifting social climates.
Arguably, the exhibition’s key message is the importance of reverberation–the necessity of listening to the echoes of stories, experiences and traditions, in recognition of their enduring import within our contemporary. In the Majilis one is enticed to traverse the themes of memory, subjecthood and interrelation; to consider one’s own position, in relation to the ecological and cultural narratives that have come before, and are yet to follow. Exalted is the resilience of indigenous identity, whatever land one might be indigenous to–the beauty of historic practices, and of their power to endure. To remember is to honour, and to honour is to reflect–Atoui invites us to reiterate legacies anew, in the present, as a route to moving forward in collective beauty and hope.
Recourse to the sonic is not novel within the artistic landscape of the past year. The exhibition can be tied to a spate of shows rooted in the act of listening, such as Reverb at 180 The Strand, or the Barbican’s upcoming Feel the Sound. Atoui’s work is differentiated, insofar as it heralds the indivisibility of the acoustic, aesthetic, kinetic and somatic in the making of (artistic and cultural) meaning. In 2025, it often feels that everyone is yelling and no-one is listening–to be received is to assume the safety of one’s echo chamber; to proffer sound beyond those confines is to scream into the void, or risk obliteration. In the heart of Madrid we witness an invitation to listen as a route to reflection; to immerse oneself in the musical iteration of experiences beyond ourselves and our lifetimes.
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Tarek Atoui (b. 1980, Beirut, Lebanon; lives and works in Paris, France) is an artist and electroacoustic composer working within the realm of sound performance and composition.
Katrina Nzegwu is a London-based artist, writer and curator.
