Tarek Atoui's Electroacoustic Instruments Transform IMMA Chapel

Tarek Atoui's exhibition 'Souffle Continu' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin features a sprawling deconstructed organ and other unorthodox instruments that blur the line between sculpture and sound. The centerpiece, 'Organ Within' (2022), uses electrical air blowers, timber crates with brass reeds, and serpentine tubes to produce animalistic and machinic sounds. Two 'Wind Houses' (2024) are glass-paneled cabinets that visitors can enter to experience sound physically. A second installation, 'Sunflowers', comprises smaller kinetic works from 2021 to 2025, including drum skins, cymbals, record players, and water containers, all arranged to create a polyphony of harmonic and rhythmic sounds. Atoui's practice was influenced by a 2012 workshop at Al Amal School for the Deaf in Sharjah, leading him to explore nonauditory sonic phenomena. The exhibition runs through 19 July 2026.