Tate Liverpool has announced that Asad Raza will create the first major commission for the Art Hall, a new space which will sit at the heart of the transformed gallery when it reopens in 2027.

Asad Raza (b.1974 in Buffalo, USA) is known for immersing audiences in multi-sensory, participatory experiences. His works often intervene in their surrounding environments, encouraging audiences to engage more deeply with the spaces around them and reflect on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Incorporating elements from nature into site-specific installations, he challenges the conventions of gallery settings by transforming them into active, experiential environments.

Helen Legg, Tate Liverpool director, says: “The Art Hall is set to become an iconic new space at Tate Liverpool. When we reopen, it will welcome our visitors and connect the building with its surrounding environment. Asad Raza is the perfect artist for us to work with to launch this new era at Tate Liverpool and I’m thrilled that we will present his work as our inaugural commission.”

Tate Liverpool describes the new Art Hall as “central to the reimagining of the building”, creating a “dynamic space for groundbreaking international commissions and large-scale works” from Tate’s collection.

In 2017 Raza created Untitled (plot for dialogue), installing a tennis-like game in a deconsecrated 16th Century church in Milan and it will be presented in 2026 in Kunsthal Gent. For Diversion in 2022, he rerouted a portion of the Main River through the Kunsthalle Portikus gallery in Frankfurt. Absorption, in which a group of cultivators create over 300 tons of ‘neosoil’, was shown as the 34th Kaldor Public Art Project in Sydney in 2019, and at the Gropius Bau, Berlin in 2020. Root sequence. Mother tongue first exhibited at the 2017 Whitney Biennial combines 26 trees, caretakers and objects.

Raza’s work has recently been seen in Arts of the Earth at Guggenheim Bilbao and Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. He has exhibited globally, including Azotea, Buenos Aires; Manifesta 15, Barcelona; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Serpentine Galleries, London; Ruhrtriennale, Essen; the Lahore Biennale; Museion, Bolzano; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

The redevelopment of Tate Liverpool will transform the UK’s most-popular modern and contemporary art gallery outside London.

Tate Liverpool has already announced that the first major retrospective of artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman will form part of the reopening programme, which will be a celebration of the rich culture of the North.

Main image: Asad Raza, Untitled (plot for dialogue), 2017. Exhibition view: CONVERSO, Milan, 2017. © Asad Raza, Photo Credit: Andrea Rossetti

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