Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1958, Miroslaw Balka is the tenth artist to be invited to transform the dramatic space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. An artist who has achieved critical acclaim internationally for works that combine installation, sculpture and film, this will be Balka's first public commission in the United Kingdom.

Balka's work explores themes of history and common experience, drawing on his Catholic upbringing and the fractured history of Poland. In recent years, he has focused on the Holocaust, which for Balka is a permanent scar on the collective memory. The dramatic installation for 190 x 90 x 4973 (2008) created a claustrophobic tunnel out of plywood with no visible destination, typifying Balka's ability to create subtle and intensely serious pieces.

Taking its name title from Samuel Beckett's poetic novel, How It Is features responses to Balka's work from leading writers Zygmunt Bauman, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julian Heynen and Laszlo Krasznahorkai, as well as dramatic installation photography of the finished project.

Helen Sainsbury is a curator and Curatorial Programme Manager at Tate Modern.

Zygmunt Bauman is Professor of Sociology at Leeds University and the author of Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) and Liquid Modernity (2000).

Julian Heynen curated Balka's exhibition Lichtzwang (2006) and is Artistic Director at Large of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Paolo Herkenhoff is a writer and curator and directed the Sao Paulo Biennial (1998)

László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer, and the author of Satan Tango (1985) and The Melancholy of Resistance (1989)

144 pp
100 colour illustrations