Tarek Atoui. At-Tāriq

The majlis is the traditional space of hospitality in Arab and North African homes, the place where guests and travellers are received, offering them refuge and coexistence. Hospitality is also the focus of the exhibition which the Lebanese artist and composer Tarek Atoui (born Beirut, 1980) is presenting at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in collaboration with TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Entitled At-Tāriq, meaning "he who comes from the night" or "the morning star", it is part of a long-term research project on the rural musical traditions of the Arab world along the sub-Saharan pilgrimage and trade routes. 

Atoui is now presenting first chapter of his project at the museum, in which he looks at the Tamazgha, the North African territories inhabited by the Amazigh or Berber people, a source and repository of musical, artistic, craft and intellectual traditions. After two years of exchange with musicians and artisans from the Moroccan Atlas region and other nearby areas, the artist shows us a space of “poetic hospitality” constructed around the majlis, a place that welcomes, receives and resonates, while generating a multiplicity of affinities and experiences. 

Music is the protagonist of At-Tāriq, becoming an act of hospitality in itself. Through intertwined textures and materials, this sound installation invites visitors to inhabit the thresholds between the traditional and the contemporary, the familiar and the unknown, revealing the nomadic inclinations present in these affinities.

Curator by Daniela Zyman.