Rosa AbbottWritingCuratingAboutBabette




Babette is a research project exploring self-invention, constructed identity, authorship and transformation. Specifically, it looks at how the adoption of fictitious personas or invented selves can shape artistic practice, particularly in the context of queer culture, subculture and counterculture. Babette seeks to analyse how these identities are reinforced through socialities, gossip, memoir, diaries, autofiction, (auto)biography and oral history.

Babette started as a series of online essays and an invite-only email newsletter, ‘Babette’s Diary’, which gave a sometimes-diaristic, sometimes-fictional recapitulation of gallery private views, public progammes and afterparties. In 2019, an artwork by Babette was included in I AM SO MULTIPLE IN NIGHTS at The Pool, Brussels.




June 2019

‘Is there smoke in the room?’

Text-based artwork, included in I AM SO MULTIPLE IN NIGHTS, curated by Pádraic E Moore at The Pool, SB34, Brussels.

‘Is there smoke in the room?’ is a series of letters addressed to the experimental writer Anna Kavan (1901–1968), who tried to develop a form of ‘nocturnal writing’, governed by subconscious thought. 

Artist list: Mehraneh Atashi / Babette / Fiona Hallinan / Allen Jones / Graham Kelly / Perri MacKenzie / Liam Morrow / Gregory Polony / Sophie Varin.

︎ Exhibition leaftlet




October 2018
‘What’s Lutz Got to Do With It’

An essay about Lutz Bacher that ended up becoming an essay about Tina Turner.

︎ Read it here




August 2017
‘Radical Reinvention: The Making of Edwige Belmore’

An essay on model, punk musician and gatekeeper of 70s/80s nightlife Edwige Belmore, who burned all her clothes in a bid for self-invention.

︎ Read it here


August 2017
‘Bobby “O”, Hi-NRG and the expression of queer desire’

An essay about The Flirts, why Hi-NRG disco is defensible, why Bobby “O” is queer (even if he’s not).

︎ Read it here

HomeWritingCuratingAbout


︎: rosa.vertov@protonmail.com