Babel
- Artist: Cildo Meireles
- Date: 2001
- Medium: Radios, lighting and sound
- Dimensions: Overall display dimensions variable
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Babel” by Cildo Meireles, created in 2001. The piece is a towering cylinder built from hundreds of second‑hand analogue radios stacked in layers. Each radio is tuned to a different station, set to the lowest audible volume, yet together they generate a low, continuous cacophony. The effect is a “tower of incomprehension” that echoes the biblical Tower of Babel—an attempt to reach the heavens that ends in confusion and scattered tongues.
The installation is bathed in a deep indigo light, adding to the eerie, almost other‑worldly atmosphere. The lower levels house older, larger radios, while the upper tiers feature newer, smaller units, creating a visual foreshortening that exaggerates the tower’s height. Meireles began the idea in 1990, and after more than a decade of research and construction, the work was realised in 2001. The piece also nods to Jorge Luis Borges, using sound and perception to question how we process information and communicate.
See it in person
Babel is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
