Babak Ganjei paints 90s sitcom sitting rooms. But which one's which?

Date
7 June 2016

“Trying to pay the rent selling postcards is a really stupid idea,” laments illustrator Babak Ganjei. But chin up, Babak: the postcards you make are very special indeed. This latest series of work, which is going to be on sale at this weekend’s East London Comic Arts Festival, presents the vacant sitting rooms of some of the TV shows the artist grew up watching.

Shown in a naive style and in bright, gaudy colours, even without characters you can make out the familiar spaces usually inhabited by the Friends gang or those chaps out of Frasier. It’s a sweet little series that is wonderfully nostalgic, in the way Space Raiders are, or Choc Dips, or Ellesse jumpers are.

“In London space is such an issue right now, the prospect of having your own place can seem an impossible dream. My son is still having to share a room with me and so this series of paintings became quite a nice soothing way of reclaiming some of the spaces I’ve lived in while growing up,” Babak explains. “I grew up with television as company and in some way it may have blurred the lines between reality and fiction wanted me to create a space between the two in my work…I might soon paint in a bunk bed for Arthur. Probably not in The Black Lodge though.”

The last time we featured Babak’s work, he’d been grafting long and hard drawing every single act playing at Visions festival.

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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Babak Ganjei: Some Places Where I’ve Lived

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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