Babak Ghazi’s involuntary reinterpretation of teaching and learning produced a gap between him and the university. Where the university works to fix what is still living into established knowledge, he seeks to allow something to appear through questions, listening and attention. By maintaining the gap and refusing to name, Ghazi wants to give value to this excess as form and content, working with its potential to invent something, or someone, new.

From this gap, he can’t help staging informal spaces for students to reveal, share and test attitudes that speak of, and from, their self-experience of impossibility, without the rush to identify or validate. He prompts speaking in order to find out what wants to be spoken, via speech, writing and material experimentation. He aligns himself with the questioning of the student, maintaining knowledge as incomplete. This is a frame in which teaching is withdrawn and learning is not assessed. He asks students to follow the work beyond professionalised art, giving weight and power to the work’s intrinsically negative and critical force.

He was Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, an intensive, experimental course that valued what Ghazi called the ‘messiness…of attitudes’ and encouraged a radically diverse cohort to work with ‘unknowingness…as opposed to professionalism’ (Artlyst). A 2017 collaborative project based on ‘rapport with students within the disciplining institution’ practised ‘inappropriation’ to explore the gap between desire and the institution. That same year he was presented with a UAL Teaching Award, nominated by students. Over more than 20 years of teaching he has maintained deep and continuous working relationships with those first encountered as students, sometimes co-creating bodies of work.

This approach defines his Lifework, a treatment of life and work as mutually entangled and disruptive. Lifework has been exhibited at Raven Row, London and Établissement d’en face, Brussels. The final public iteration of Lifework, at Arcadia Missa, London (titled with his name struck through) announced his self-removal from the gallery system in favour of following the anonymous autonomy of the work. L-fework, now without I, is continuously unworked and reworked in writing, kept unpublished yet partially revealed online at pr-vate.space. He asks: What does the work want?

"As a tutor, Babak’s approach to crits reflects him as a person – he cares but he is not a caretaker, he takes his own inventory, not others’- instead he creates a safe, respectful space for students to do so for themselves, to explore and question what really matters, what works and what doesn’t, so that they might make work that is fresh, interesting and new. Making art is a very complex and chaotic process, just like human beings and Babak’s effective, supportive and knowledgeable teaching style fully takes this into account. It is an unorthodox approach but one which works exceptionally well, perhaps requiring maturity of character and an accompanying degree of self-knowledge on the part of the student, but surely Art requires this.

As my tutor, Babak was always respectful, always thoughtful, always honest but with that, always compassionate and kind. Because he has such a mature understanding of others, this engenders a gentleness and a refusal to be judgemental – these are attributes which are seldom seen but are so vitally important, especially for students like myself who are survivors of trauma and abuse. Alongside all of this, he was professionally and personally reliable; in truly caring about my and all the students’ progression, in his awareness and respect for boundaries, in his consciousness of current political, cultural & societal issues, in promptly answering emails, showing up on time to meetings and generally following up anything he said he would do - all with a consistent rare wit and intelligence that made it both a pleasure and a gift to be his student at Chelsea."

"Hairy
Skinny
Sweet
Man
Holding e-cigar
With mystical face behind smog

Give challenge
In my practice

Reading my work like fortunetelling "

"He’s one of those people you can tell is genuinely listening and taking on board what you say. He cared when it came to personal development of an artistic identity, allowing each artist to structure a tutorial how they saw fit: be that the form, location or duration. Each encounter was different and unique. In every tutorial, I felt extremely comfortable to talk honestly and frankly about my work and it allowed me to truly get to some central ideas of my art practice and perhaps even my personality. His alternative way of group tutorials allowed for unexpected pathways of conversation. He would create a very relaxed environment that meant everyone could speak their mind with no judgement. During tutorials, discussions would develop naturally, therefore encouraging peer to peer conversations that could grow in the studio environment. Amongst the rigid structures of an institute he was a breath of fresh air when it came to thinking outside the box with new creative pathways to explore."

"I can't really find a proper way to describe Babak's teaching. On the one hand, I experienced a massive intellectual exchange in our conversations. But at the same time I have enjoyed a lot of anti-intellectual fun. It was bizarre. Babak as an tutor is the one when I said "Sorry I have nothing to show you" and he would be like "Okay then let's talk about nothing"; he is the one when we play badminton and he encourages us to think about the criticality of playfulness; he is the one that leaves a message that I can only hear it in the echo. It's all about the echo.""

"Having had the opportunity to have Babak as my tutor in 2nd year was probably the highlight of university to me. I have always found myself extremely disconnected from most members of staff in the sense that for my artwork, which is in short about me, my relationship with people, my dreams, fears and experiences, it is crucial that I have a deeper, more meaningful conversation with them which stems out from the basic “show me your progress and what have you been reading/ looking at lately”. With Babak as a tutor I finally noticed the importance of having someone to talk to in terms of art: to be very honest, I never really understood how a tutorial would ever be beneficial for my work, As I had never really opened up in a less superficial way before and therefore rarely got something exiting out of it which which I could use to develop my thoughts and ideas after. The point is, a tutor for a Fine Art student must be someone who operates in a way that understands you as a person and is interested in your life through various angles and from there can help you dig into crucial aspects of your character and personality. Babak was that person for me; his way of teaching meant conversations with him feel continuous and natural (but obviously always professional) other than the “check in and out” kind of approach that I was used to from other tutors and was very rarely useful."

"He gives time, care and real attention to you and your work, asking questions in a way that leads you to understand your intentions more deeply.. to analyse from a different perspective, to broaden your thinking. He also encourages movement beyond your comfort zone, challenging your pre conceived notions of yourself and your work - enabling freshness, vibrancy and life! His interest is genuine and exciting.. and I have found his teaching /mentoring inspiring, in one to one tutorials and group crits, where he elegantly shapes the flow of discussion."

"There are no brakes with him"

"I can recount in vivid detail our first meeting and the question that I still ask myself today: ‘Do you take responsibility for your work?’ "

"I am interested in how my practice is intrinsically linked to my personal exploration and development, but it wasn’t until I started having conversations with Babak that I started to access the language that linked together my drive to express myself in my life and my work. This was a very important for me as I wanted to close the gap between my life and my work as much as I could. So it was very helpful to have the type of tutor that drew out personal anecdotes in order to understand, not just the physical work that I was presenting, but also understand what I was really trying to say to provide feedback on how successful the work was on those terms. As an extension of this Babak got to know me well as a person which made his feedback more concise which helped me get to a very stable place by the end of third year. His tutelage meant that I have been able to confidently continue to develop my work after leaving university. "

"Kickers on his feet. Vape in his hand.
Never a lecture. Always a conversation.
Question. Silence. Another question.
I was never officially Babak’s student but I had the chance to have several tutorials with him.
The first one was a turning point. A door opened. Babak engages deeply with an artist’s work challenging your thinking while giving you the confidence to trust your instincts.
7 years later we’re still in dialogue and his guidance continues to accompany me. "