Babi Badalov

I am Euromental

Installation, variable dimensions, 2015

Ink on cotton

Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK7896)

Babi Badalov has spent his life migrating between Russia, the United States, Europe, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. He is now based in France after being granted refugee status. Badalov enacts a kind of linguistic play, mixing various languages – he speaks Talysh, Farsi, Azeri, Russian, Turkish, English, and French, thanks to his many years of living clandestinely in numerous countries – as well as signs, etymologies and puns. The work reflects not only the artist’s years of mourning, imperilment and displacement, but also a utopian wish for a future hybrid idiom that is common to all. It also conveys the complexities of his personal journey, a metaphor for the cultural and historical conflicts of the globalized, contemporary world.