Babi Badalov
EASTanbul WESTanbul
June 5, 2015
Carico Massimo is happy to present the first solo project by Babi Badalov in Italy “EASTanbul WESTanbul”.
The work of Babi Badalov is materialized by encounters between cultures, geographies and languages. Stateless, originating from Azerbaijan, a country at the lace between orient and occident, between post-communism and neo-capitalism, his work is a plain of articulation of situations of culture. Calligraphies, images, objects, sounds, dreams are all the palimpsest of a wandering figure in a fragmented Babylon.
The path of Badalov is the one of a constant critique of cultural homologation, a yell for the prime heterogeneity of life. The project he proposes for Carico Massimo is a site-specific pictorial intervention, oriented on articulating this critique of cultural homologation, addressing clear cases of abuse in systems of artistic legitimation.
Most of the time, at the border between Orient and Occident, culture turns into an instrument for political diplomacy and clientelist networking. In front of that sterile status quo, Badalov proposes an explosion of dialogic diversity, at the corner between calligrams and slogans, poetry and politics, in the only common language we can all master, the freedom that is artistic expression.
photos: Juan Pablo Macías
Eastanbul Westanbul
Babi Badalov
2015
€20
The book documents the exhibition held at Carico Massimo in July 2015.
editorial project: Carico Massimo
design: Zirkumflex
photos and text: Juan Pablo Macías
publisher: Carico Massimo, Debatte Editore
printed in Offset tritone on Munken Print paper, August 2016, at Debatte Typography.
230×161 mm
Italian / English
500 copies