A Chronology of Turbine Hall Encounters

The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is the only place in London where art routinely behaves like geology, weather, infrastructure and divine intervention - sometimes all at once. Seeing some of its commissions in chronological order is like watching the evolution of a species whose sole survival strategy is “grow larger and confuse the public.”
For me, the story begins with Louise Bourgeois’ Maman (2000), the first great arachnid matriarch of contemporary art. Installed as Tate Modern opened, she transformed the hall into a psychoanalytic terrarium. Eight legs, a brood-sac of marble eggs, and a height that made even adults regress to their toddler selves. Maman set the precedent that Turbine Hall artworks are not viewed; they are survived.
Then Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas (2002–03) arrived, stretching 150 metres of red PVC across the space like an esophagus designed by a Renaissance mathematician. Walking beneath it triggered a range of emotions, from awe to the faint suspicion that you were being slowly digested. It was big, bold and vaguely biological- everything the early 2000s wanted in a sculpture.
Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003–04) promptly changed the climate. A glowing artificial sun and a mirrored ceiling caused Londoners to lie on the floor in a state of collective, phototherapeutic rapture. For a brief moment, strangers formed spontaneous sun-worshipping communities, proving that the British can relax (provided someone installs a star indoors).
By contrast, Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth (2007–08) did not fill the hall but cracked it open. A long, widening fissure ran down the floor, elegantly symbolising borders and divisions while also prompting an unforgettable new genre of visitor behaviour: conceptual tiptoeing. It remains the only artwork to turn health-and-safety officers into unwilling performance artists.
Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (2010–11) blanketed the hall with one hundred million hand-painted porcelain seeds; a work that looked benign until you realised you were standing atop an ocean of human labour. I bent down to examine a seed, performing what I told myself was “microscopic art-historical analysis” but was, in fact, beachcombing in a museum.
Finally, Tino Sehgal’s These Associations (2012) replaced objects with people. Performers wove through the hall in arcs of conversation and sudden sprints, unsettling the comfortable distinction between viewer and viewed. It felt like being absorbed into a sociological experiment, albeit one with excellent casting choices.
Viewed chronologically, these installations form a personal anthology of awe, humour and occasional spatial disorientation. In the Turbine Hall, art is not something you observe from a distance, it is something that happens to you.