Accessed via the staircase that winds around the concrete cylinder connecting the different floors of the Bourse de Commerce, the Foyer hosts a work by Tarek Atoui, exhibited for the first time in Europe at the Venice Biennale of 2019. Also presented in Guangzhou and Singapore, The GROUND has since become a performance space. At the Palazzo Grassi and Teatrino, in Venice, and now in Paris, the work is activated by the artist, whether alone or accompanied by guests. These performances will be presented as part of the Bourse de Commerce programme of live events.

This polyptych is the result of five years of traveling throughout the Pearl River Delta in China, investigating and observing agricultural, architectural and musical practices, both traditional and contemporary. This participatory work invites visitors to understand and experience sound in a new fashion, so that in Rilke’s words: “The emptiness inside […] allows [us] to vibrate in full resonance with [the] world.”

Tarek Atoui was born in Beirut in 1980 but studied electro-acoustic music in France. He has performed his sound art creations around the world, on the instruments and spatial devices he designs, sculpts and installs, making his work as a visual artist a musical matrix. To modulate the incredible sounds and compose, Atoui begins by posing and modelling the space where his pieces will vibrate. Under his fingers, sound reveals itself as a material to be sculpted. His collaborative works are nourished by research on the history of music, a reflection on performance as a dynamic of fulfilment, and the relationship, at play in the installation, between the specific and the general.