Babi Badalov born in 1959 in Lerik, Azerbaijan. He lives and works in Paris.
Babi Badalov is a visual artist, poet who expresses his ideas through visual poetry, art objects, installations and live performances. His work often is dedicated to linguistic explorations researching the limits of language and the borders it imposes upon its users and based on his personal experience of linguistic inconveniences while travelling.
Badalov's visual poetry often takes the form of a diary, created every day through a combination of his own linguistic research of manipulated pictorial material, mainly with political content. The nomad life of an artist (or traveler, migrant, refugee) does not only cause him or her a struggling adaptation period of cultural integration but can primarily turn him or her into a prisoner of language.
Notable recent exhibitions include solo shows To Make Art to Take Clothes Off at MUSAC – Museum Contemporary Art in Leon (2017); For the Wall for the World at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2016); Partisanism at the Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm (2016). Group shows and biennials include When Faith Moves Mountains at PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv (2022), 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), 6thMoscow Biennale (2015), 15th Jakarta Biennale (2013) and Manifesta 8 (2010).
Badalov’s works are in collections of M HKA Museum in Antwerp, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, MUSAC in Leon, CNAP in Paris.