Tarek Atoui is a Lebanese sound artist and composer based in Paris known for his innovative approach to sound, performance, and instrument-making. His work explores the physicality of sound and the act of listening, creating immersive experiences that challenge traditional boundaries between artist, audience, and instrument. Atoui frequently collaborates with musicians, instrument makers, and people with diverse hearing abilities, emphasising inclusivity and experimentation.

Atoui’s exhibition at IMMA is presented in two phases, comprising an installation, titled Souffle Continu, in the Chapel that focuses on the tactile quality of the sound, vibration, and movement of “wind instruments”; and in the gallery spaces Sunflowers presents a series of works inspired by the rhythmic and material traditions of Korean drumming.

For the installation Souffle Continu, Atoui has created Wind Houses that link hearing, touch, and sight. These are listening and performance spaces which also serve as musical instruments. As is the case with a flute, air is divided by a bevelled board, thus producing low sounds that resonate throughout the body and in the surrounding space. The organs within the space are sculptural installations that combines research into church pipe organs with the sonic experiences of deaf people. It consists of a network of tubes which connect a computer with an air blower, and various organ modules which interact with each other in such a way that their sounds constantly adapt to each other.

In the gallery spaces Atoui’s new works Sunflowers are influenced by Korean drumming tradition, the spaces will be designed as both listening space and places for the audience to make their own material through workshops. Atoui’s work plays with improvisation, activation and listening that immerses the audiences in unprecedented sensory and cognitive experiences. His work opens up new channels of imagination and knowledge that are challenging and embrace experimentation.

The exhibition will be punctuated by a programme of live performances and workshops. Tarek Atoui will perform on 20 February as part of the exhibition launch. A second performance by invited musicians Natalia Beylis and Áine O’Dwyer takes place on 21 March.

Presented in association with the French Embassy in Ireland.

Tarek Atoui (Beirut, Lebanon, 1980; lives and works in Paris) is an artist and electroacoustic composer who explores the medium of sound and the way it gives shape to perceptions through dynamic installations, experimental acoustic environments, and collaborative performances. The artist works with composers and craftsmen from different countries to invent complex instruments with strong sculptural halos. By bringing together a wide range of materials and knowledge he tests the acoustic properties and the unique ways in which elements like bronze, water, glass and stone transmit and reflect sound. Using custom-built electronic instruments and computers, Atoui references current social and political realities, revealing music and new technologies as powerful aspects of expression and identity. Education and social connection are integral aspects of the artist’s practice that often collaborate with different local communities and invites the visitor to interact and experience his multi-sensory environments.

Tarek Atoui artworks activated by Natalia Beylis and Áine O’Dwyer
Date: Saturday 21 March
Time: 2pm – 3pm
Location: Chapel & Gallery 3

Admission is free. Guests are encouraged to move between the two performance spaces. Entry is on a first-come, first-served basis. Advanced booking is recommended. Book here.

About the Event:

Tarek Atoui is a Lebanese sound artist and composer based in Paris known for his innovative approach to sound, performance, and instrument-making. IMMA presents his first solo exhibition in Ireland where his work is presented in two phases, as an installation, titled Souffle Continu, in the Baroque Chapel that focuses on the tactile quality of the sound, vibration, and movement of “wind instruments”; and in the gallery spaces Sunflowers presents a series of works inspired by the rhythmic and material traditions of Korean drumming. For this performance Tarek Atoui invites Irish musicians Natalia Beylis and Áine O’Dwyer to activate the Souffle Continu and Sunflowers artworks. Atoui’s artworks explore the physicality of sound and the act of listening, creating immersive experiences that challenge traditional boundaries between artist, audience, and instrument Sunflowers, located in Gallery 3, is a complex sound environment, merging Korean drumming tradition and electronic soundscapes, where Áine O’Dwyer will perform.

In the Chapel, Natalia Beylis will activate Souffle Continu artworks Organ Within Wind House #1, and Wind House #2.

Natalia Beylis has released over 40 albums between solo works and collaborations and has appeared on numerous compilations. A sonic storyteller and multi-instrumentalist based in rural Ireland, her work mirrors her surroundings: creaking trees, farm animals, vocal samples taken from conversations with her neighbours, the north-westerly breeze, creatures rusting in the hedgerows, strange noises from the bog at dusk and rainfall. She regularly records on a variety of traditional instruments as well as non-musical sound sources: her solo compositions and improvisations are a mix of garbled tape collage recordings, manipulated sounds of seemingly mundaneobjects, eerie mandola mantras and dreamscape piano voyages. A recently released album exclusively uses sounds created by a domestic Singer sewing machine. Natalia regularly collaborates with cellist Eimear Reidy, percussionist Willie Stewart in the duo Hedgling, and is a member of the group BB84. She also creates pieces for ensembles. Her latest composition, Around Here, The Birds Plant the Trees, uses conkers as a sonic source and visual conducting aid to direct the players.

Áine O’Dwyer (b. 1982, county Limerick) graduated from the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2006 and the Slade School of Art London in 2011. She is a multi-disciplinary artist, a musician, composer and performer whose work is informed by both the conceptual concerns of sound-art and traditional compositional techniques, embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience and architecture. She has created works internationally for large-scale and intimate settings which often allow for both planned and chance events to co-exist. Recent presentations include Old Songs (2025), a performance installation commissioned by Oscillation festival, Brussels and Sing in the Dark (2024), a voice and Acousmonium performance at Archipel festival, Switzerland. Her most recent album, Turning in Space (2023) a site-specific work based on the dialogue between a found-tuned piano and suburban surroundings, was released on Blank Forms as a triple cassette boxset. Áine has previously performed work by Scratch Orchestra, Jennifer Walsh, Lina Lapelette, Annea Lockwoodand William Eggelston.