Biography

The oeuvre of Bady Dalloul currently based in Paris, sophisticatedly and cunningly employs collage across various media: texts, drawings, video, and objects to produce powerful works commenting on the past and the present. His collages imply a construction, the fabrication of a space that is simultaneously autobiographical, critical, poetic and narrative. Thus, he makes narratives where the real and fiction, and individual and collective experiences, enter into a permanent dialogue questioning the official historical grand narratives. The artist conceived of a fragile book, tattered by time and long use. It’s a diary, and he has patiently filled every page. He has taken notes ever since his childhood spent in Paris and Damascus, cutting out and pasting in illustrations from history magazines and books to make up stories like Badland (1999–2004). His practice began as a way to keep busy and counter boredom and the incomprehensibility of the crisis that has held Syria in its grip for decades. For 5 years, he filled his notebooks with definitions, notes on events, information (scientific, geostrategic, military, economic and historical) and maps. A long-term project guided by a question, an obsession: do images represent the truth of our world?