Babak Ganjei

Babak Ganjei is a London-based artist and illustrator noted for his text-based paintings.

Early life and education

Ganjei was born in London, growing up around Primrose Hill until moving to Bournemouth at the age of eleven. He has described this move as "a bit like suddenly being the only ethnics in the town" and as "guaranteeing that our teenage years were spent understanding what it is to be an outsider". He started drawing young, as his mother was a painter, and his father an architect.

Ganjei studied at Central Saint Martins in London. He graduated in 2001 with a degree in fine arts, according to an oil-painted CV he exhibited in 2018. His promotional page on the website of literary and talent agency Curtis Brown states that Ganjei "sent his first email in the library at Central Saint Martins in 2001 and vowed the Internet would never take off and has been playing catch up ever since".

He describes his early influences as the band Nirvana, and the punk / DIY aesthetic.

Career

According to Hannah Silver writing for Wallpaper, the decade after Ganjei graduated was spent playing in bands and creating comics. Ganjei has described the years 2005 to 2011 as when he "join[ed] bands to be broke in a gang". During this period, he published the comic book Hilarious Consequences (2010), and played in the band Absentee for six years. They were signed to Mephis Industries, and released their final album in 2008. Ganjei and two other members of Absentee were also in the band Wet Paint.

In 2014, Ganjei received coverage from Daily Express, The Independent, Metro, and BBC Radio 5 Live for auctioning some twigs on eBay alongside other unusual items like handwritten Fresh Prince of Bel Air lyrics. The same year, he published Babak Ganjei's Roadhouse, a graphic novel based on the 1989 Patrick Swayze film Road House. It was described as "astonishingly good" by Aaron Souppouris of The Verge.

In 2018, Ganjei exhibited a solo show, It’s Really Not Funny, at London's War Gallery. Works displayed in this show included an oil-painted CV, and a painting of his Barclaycard. He tried to sell the painting to Barclaycard, but they did not purchase it and suggested he cancel his card for security reasons.

In 2021, fashion boutique Browns showed a selection of Ganjei's neons and works on paper in their Shoreditch store in an exhibition called Honey Wagon. Ganjei described the structure of the show as being like a band playing a set full of greatest hits.

Ganjei hosts a show, Hot Mess, on NTS Radio.