‘Private Institution’ is a new space focusing on art from the Global Asias, the Caucasus, the Middle East and North Africa which has recently opened its doors in Paris and will feature innovative dialogue shows between both established and emerging artists.

Curators Azad Asifovich and Hannah Kreile have opened a new art space called Private Institution in Paris. Both curators have long had an interest in art from the most diverse parts of the world outside the Western European and North American mainstream With an academic background in archaeology and art history Latvia-born Hannah Kreile has previously worked with Visto Images, Laurence Dreyfus, Lafayette Anticipations, as well as Asia Now. Curator Azad Azivofich was born in Azerbaijan and his latest projects include the Belgian Pavilion at the Malta Biennale which received the Maltese Falcon Prize. His work questions grey zones, gender, the art world and it revisits (non)western historical references.

Their cozy new art space in the heart of Marais invites visitors to slow down and contemplate a well-edited selection of artworks. Their mission is to encourage the inclusion of artists from the Global Asias, the Caucasus, Middle East and North Africa - as well as their diasporas - in leading institutional and private collections around the world.

At Private Institution they plan to mount shows featuring two artists, dialogue shows between an established and an emerging artist which draw out the aesthetic similarities or create thought provoking juxtapositions. They are a curatorial duo aiming to offer a series of artistic duos.

Their inaugural show ‘Language without Alphabet’ features works by Babi Badalov (b. 1959) and Aziza Shadenova (b. 1989). From different generations, each artist possesses a multilayered sense of identity, a trove of memories formed in the various countries in which they have lived, and multiple languages that co-exist in their minds. They both manifest a strong interest towards decorative ornamentation which celebrates their own origins. From Badalov’s visual poetry to Shadenova’s witty puzzles the exhibition breaks through state borders, biases and linguistic barriers.

Badalov of Azeri and Talysh origin was born in the remote Talysh region of Soviet Azerbaijan close to the Iranian border. In 1980 he moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) where he immediately became one of the key figures of the local underground art scene. He was a member of the unofficial Association of Experimental Visual Arts and frequently collaborated with Neo-Academists Timur Novikov (1958–2002) and Vadim Ovchinnikov (1951–1996). During that period, Badalov tried out various media and became particularly interested in textile art and poetry. It is then, when he first started to mix various languages, alphabets which has become a hallmark of his art, and he won the prestigious ‘Pushkinskaya 10’ poetry competition in Russian. After many attempts to settle in Finland and the UK, in 2011 due to threats of an honour killing in Azerbaijan because of his homosexuality, he was granted asylum in France and he currently lives in Paris. 

Badalov is one of the most internationally represented artists from Azerbaijan, his works have been acquired by the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Musée d’Art Moderne of Paris and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Hermès and the Palais de Tokyo.

For this show Badalov has created a monumental textile work called ‘WORDless’, with Persian, Arabic, Cyrillic, Latin and Hebrew scripts. “He has an amazing sense of language”, comments curator Azad Asifovich, who sees this work as a true manifesto of the artist. Visually, Badalov’s piece is like a collage, ornamental and calligraphic. During the many years in which he wandered without a permanent home, staying in immigrant detention facilities across Europe and trying to find a safe haven, he made collages in his sketchbooks, evocative of collages by Henri Matisse (1869–1954), as well as Sergei Paradjanov (1924–1990)’s prison works. His work has been included in the French National Institute for Art History’s book “History of the Collage”.

Aziza Shadenova who is of Kazakh origin, grew up in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and is now living in England. Central Asia is known for its historical and contemporary inscriptions – over the course of one century the Uzbek script was changed three times from Arabic to Latin, then to Cyrillic and back to Latin again. And Kyrgyz language uses both Cyrillic and Arabic scripts. Shadenova’s works are in collections of LACMA, Los Angeles, Museum of Moving Image in London and National Museum of Kazakhstan, in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.

Aziza’s ‘Quilt/Korpe’ consists of sixty square canvas boards assembled together in this exhibition into a large rectangle, although they can be placed in any combination. Each piece of this bright and colourful artwork depicts various objects, patterns and plants, including Uzbek adras-like, Mongolian flora – even Sicilian flowers. Shadenova combines river shells with camels and scorpions which you find in deserts, with pomegranates and the cheeky faces of Asian girls with two pigtails giggling enigmatically. In her other three-square works on canvas she uses the same approach by intertwining late monumental Soviet art and its echoes of the avantgarde with a strong presence of women.

Looking at how language can divide and suppress us, Badalov and Shadenova offer their own aesthetical reconsiderations of the very notion of language. In their hands the medium is the alphabet regardless of its visual appearance. Each and every one of us, possesses our personal story with our own alphabet in mind.