Trumpet player Philippe Battikha has reoriented his practice to sound art, converting objects and spaces in order to examine our visually-dominant environment and our ability to lend an ear to what surrounds us. For Battikha, the notion of contamination is central: sound has the capacity to “threaten” space since it travels through walls and barriers. The political dimension of listening techniques and uses is thus sketched out in a work that builds on experimental music and the creation of sound installations and sound objects. Lilian and Billy Mauer were the sponsors of Philippe Battikha’s studio at the Darling Foundry in 2022. His studio was sponsored by the support of Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation in 2021.
Philippe Battikha is a multidisciplinary artist and musician based in Montreal. He is currently an artist in residence at the Darling Foundry, where he presented his first large scale solo exhibition Someone's Always Listening in 2021. Battikha is a founding member of the independent music label Samizdat Records and the collective Jean Couteau, as well as the artist-run spaces L'envers (Montreal) and 80V (Brooklyn, NY). He has presented work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec City, Qc, 2016); Alt Space LOOP (Seoul, Korea, 2022); Espace F (Matane, Qc, 2022); The Little Gallery of San Bernardino (California, USA, 2020); FOFA Gallery (Montreal, Qc, 2019).
