Artist Talk: Eve Aboulkheir

Eve Aboulkheir discusses Medea(s) – Tskaltubo, revisiting her time at the abandoned Medea sanatorium in Tskaltubo, a Soviet-era spa town in Georgia, and how that experience informed the work. She shows photographs and plays recordings made there, then reveals how she modified those sounds in the studio. For her, it’s change—not documentation—that conveys the presence of a place. The acoustics of architecture become the architectures of memory.

Eve performs Medea(s) – Tskaltubo on Saturday, December 6.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation and the Chicago Architecture Biennial; additional support provided by Villa Albertine Chicago, the French Institute for Cultural Education

Eve Aboulkheir (b.1991, Paris, France) is a sound artist and composer based in Paris. She uses field recordings gathered in specific sites, blending them with synthetic textures. Her work often begins from lived experiences of perceptual disturbance—moments when sensory input falters and the world seems to slip. Her compositions emerge from that instability, inviting listeners into in-between zones where meaning destabilizes.

She has performed at CTM Festival, Berlin; MaerzMusik, Berlin; Sonic Acts, Amsterdam; Out.Fest, Barreiro; and Elevate, Graz, among others. Her projects include Venus Road, inspired by a nocturnal journey through Singapore’s MacRitchie Reservoir, where forest sounds seemed to sync with the pulse of the city.

Releases include Hypnagogic Walks (KRAAK, 2023) and 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream on GRM Portraits (Shelter Press, 2023, split with Lasse Marhaug), a piece first presented on the GRM Acousmonium. Aboulkheir studied at Villa Arson in Nice.