U.S. Debut: Eve Aboulkheir’s Medea(s) – Tskaltubo

Medea(s) – Tskaltubo is Eve Aboulkheir’s speculative sonic study of the abandoned Medea Sanatorium (1962) in Tskaltubo, Georgia. The work draws on field recordings inside the vacant building, transformed on a modular synthesizer, alongside ARP 2500 sounds captured during a residency at INA GRM in Paris. For her U.S. debut at the Graham Foundation, Aboulkheir arranges these materials into evolving structures, shaping them in real time with spatialization, reverb, and filtering.

Tskaltubo, founded on bubbling hot springs, once hosted hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens annually. Medea, an imposing classical sanatorium, embodied ideals of health and prosperity before the Soviet collapse left it abandoned and later a refuge for those displaced by the war in Abkhazia—caught between grandeur and ruin.

Aboulkheir describes her experience: “I approached Medea as a succession of listening points. The distant croaking of frogs, heard from inside, overlapped with the creaking of doors… the same frogs, heard by the pond, mingled with air currents through the colonnades and the slamming of doors upstairs.” For her, Medea embodies ambiguity—architecture gradually overtaken by nature, suspended between care and neglect, echoing the ambivalence of its mythic namesake.

Artist Talk: Eve Aboulkheir – Medea(s) – Tskaltubo

December 4, 2025 | Lampo

About the artist

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.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Additional support provided by Villa Albertine Chicago and the French Institute for Culture and Education.