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Lot Essay
Babel Tower (2012) is one of Ayman Baalbaki’s expressionist interpretations of the biblical Tower of Babel, a recurring subject through which the artist reflects on ambition, collapse and the fragility of collective existence. Here, the mythical structure rises from an expansive, almost deserted landscape, rendered in deep auburns and copper tones, with sandy reds animating the surface of its monumental façade. Behind it, land and sky extend seemingly without limit: the earth is traced in muted greens, while the sky opens into luminous passages of orange, pink and white. This expansive landscape is central to the work’s atmosphere, surrounding the tower with an unsettling sense of emptiness while introducing a softness that tempers its otherwise apocalyptic character.
Baalbaki departs significantly from the conventional image of Babel. Rather than presenting the tower as a densely inhabited city or an architectural feat reaching triumphantly towards the heavens, he imagines Babel Tower as a hollow structure; its interior exposed like a termite mound. The form is thought to have been inspired by the termitaria the artist encountered during a journey to Africa, transforming the biblical tower into something at once architectural and primordial. Devoid of inhabitants or signs of contemporary life, the structure appears less like a monument to civilisation than the remnant of a world that has already disappeared. This sense of desolation is heightened by Baalbaki’s vigorous painterly language. Thick impasto and gestural brushwork build up the surface of the tower, giving the architecture an almost sculptural presence. Passages of red, brown and ochre seem to burn across the façade, giving the architecture an almost scorched physicality, as though the tower has survived some catastrophe only to stand as its final witness.
Babel represents humanity’s attempt to measure itself against God, becoming a symbol of transgression and divine punishment. Yet the punishment is collective: those who sought to unite through a common ambition are dispersed through the confusion of language. Baalbaki’s Babel Tower shifts this biblical narrative into a meditation on the collapse of collective human endeavour. The traditional city, often understood as a symbol of order, community and civilisation, is transformed here into an image of desolation. The hollow tower stands not as the achievement of a unified society, but as the remnant of one whose ambitions have ended in fragmentation. Positioned at a turning point in humanity’s primeval history, the story of Babel becomes, in Baalbaki’s hands, a powerful allegory for the uncertainties that follow the collapse of a shared world.
This reading acquires particular resonance within Baalbaki’s wider engagement with architecture, ruins and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Born in Beirut in 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War began, Baalbaki belongs to a generation whose visual memory has been profoundly shaped by displacement, destruction and the fractured urban fabric of the city. His paintings repeatedly transform architecture and constructed forms into psychological and political metaphors, allowing the material traces of conflict to carry the weight of individual and collective memory. In Babel Tower, the ruined structure becomes a vessel for the psychological residue of war: a haunting image of a fractured world, carrying within its damaged surface the memory of violence, loss and displacement. Its desolation recalls cities emptied and transformed by conflict, while its monumental presence speaks to the persistence of what survives.
The tower also resonates with Baalbaki’s own history. His family was displaced from Odeisse to Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli occupation, an experience that informs his sustained engagement with ruined and abandoned spaces. The hollow architecture of Babel Tower can therefore be read alongside the artist’s recurring depictions of buildings as places marked by both absence and memory. The structure evokes a once-inhabited world that has been emptied, connecting the biblical dispersal of Babel with the more intimate histories of forced movement and rupture that have shaped modern Lebanon. What was conceived in the biblical story as a warning against the fragmentation of a collective endeavour becomes, in Baalbaki’s hands, a deeply contemporary image of a society fractured by violence, displacement and the loss of common ground.
The vastness of the surrounding landscape is crucial to this transformation. By placing Babel Tower within an almost boundless field of earth and sky, Baalbaki denies the structure the certainty of monumentality. It no longer stands at the centre of a functioning civilisation but as an isolated remnant within an uncertain world. Yet the luminous colours surrounding it complicate the work’s atmosphere of desolation. The oranges, pinks, greens and whites introduce moments of beauty into an otherwise apocalyptic vision, suggesting that destruction and resilience can coexist within the same image. This tension between ruin and endurance lies at the heart of Baalbaki’s practice: architecture becomes not only evidence of what has been lost, but a means of keeping memory visible. At the same time, the landscape seems to hold open the possibility that something might emerge after destruction, offering a fragile suggestion of renewal and the possibility of regeneration alongside the memory of what has been lost.
Babel Tower originates from the prestigious Dalloul Collection, Beirut, founded by Dr Ramzi and Saeda Al Husseini Dalloul and now led by their son, Dr Basel Dalloul. Spanning five decades, the collection reflects the artistic, political and cultural shifts of the Arab world and the family's dedication to preserving and promoting Arab creativity.
Born in Beirut, in 1975, into a lineage of artists that includes his father, Fawzi Baalbaki, and uncle Abdelhamid Baalbaki, Ayman Baalbaki is a Lebanese visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and assemblage. He began his artistic training at the Lebanese University in Beirut, where he received a diploma in Fine Arts in 1998. In 2000, he moved to Paris to pursue a graduate degree in Art-Space from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 2002, and a research postgraduate degree in Art of Images and Contemporary Art from Université Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis in 2003. During the summers of 2001 and 2002, he participated in the Summer Academy at Darat al Funun under the mentorship of the renowned Syrian modernist Marwan Kassab-Bachi, an experience that proved formative for a generation of emerging Arab artists. In 2022, Baalbaki represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale.
His work is held in prominent institutional collections worldwide, including Tate, London; the British Museum, London; Institut du monde arabe, Paris; Farjam Foundation, Dubai; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut.
Baalbaki departs significantly from the conventional image of Babel. Rather than presenting the tower as a densely inhabited city or an architectural feat reaching triumphantly towards the heavens, he imagines Babel Tower as a hollow structure; its interior exposed like a termite mound. The form is thought to have been inspired by the termitaria the artist encountered during a journey to Africa, transforming the biblical tower into something at once architectural and primordial. Devoid of inhabitants or signs of contemporary life, the structure appears less like a monument to civilisation than the remnant of a world that has already disappeared. This sense of desolation is heightened by Baalbaki’s vigorous painterly language. Thick impasto and gestural brushwork build up the surface of the tower, giving the architecture an almost sculptural presence. Passages of red, brown and ochre seem to burn across the façade, giving the architecture an almost scorched physicality, as though the tower has survived some catastrophe only to stand as its final witness.
Babel represents humanity’s attempt to measure itself against God, becoming a symbol of transgression and divine punishment. Yet the punishment is collective: those who sought to unite through a common ambition are dispersed through the confusion of language. Baalbaki’s Babel Tower shifts this biblical narrative into a meditation on the collapse of collective human endeavour. The traditional city, often understood as a symbol of order, community and civilisation, is transformed here into an image of desolation. The hollow tower stands not as the achievement of a unified society, but as the remnant of one whose ambitions have ended in fragmentation. Positioned at a turning point in humanity’s primeval history, the story of Babel becomes, in Baalbaki’s hands, a powerful allegory for the uncertainties that follow the collapse of a shared world.
This reading acquires particular resonance within Baalbaki’s wider engagement with architecture, ruins and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Born in Beirut in 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War began, Baalbaki belongs to a generation whose visual memory has been profoundly shaped by displacement, destruction and the fractured urban fabric of the city. His paintings repeatedly transform architecture and constructed forms into psychological and political metaphors, allowing the material traces of conflict to carry the weight of individual and collective memory. In Babel Tower, the ruined structure becomes a vessel for the psychological residue of war: a haunting image of a fractured world, carrying within its damaged surface the memory of violence, loss and displacement. Its desolation recalls cities emptied and transformed by conflict, while its monumental presence speaks to the persistence of what survives.
The tower also resonates with Baalbaki’s own history. His family was displaced from Odeisse to Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli occupation, an experience that informs his sustained engagement with ruined and abandoned spaces. The hollow architecture of Babel Tower can therefore be read alongside the artist’s recurring depictions of buildings as places marked by both absence and memory. The structure evokes a once-inhabited world that has been emptied, connecting the biblical dispersal of Babel with the more intimate histories of forced movement and rupture that have shaped modern Lebanon. What was conceived in the biblical story as a warning against the fragmentation of a collective endeavour becomes, in Baalbaki’s hands, a deeply contemporary image of a society fractured by violence, displacement and the loss of common ground.
The vastness of the surrounding landscape is crucial to this transformation. By placing Babel Tower within an almost boundless field of earth and sky, Baalbaki denies the structure the certainty of monumentality. It no longer stands at the centre of a functioning civilisation but as an isolated remnant within an uncertain world. Yet the luminous colours surrounding it complicate the work’s atmosphere of desolation. The oranges, pinks, greens and whites introduce moments of beauty into an otherwise apocalyptic vision, suggesting that destruction and resilience can coexist within the same image. This tension between ruin and endurance lies at the heart of Baalbaki’s practice: architecture becomes not only evidence of what has been lost, but a means of keeping memory visible. At the same time, the landscape seems to hold open the possibility that something might emerge after destruction, offering a fragile suggestion of renewal and the possibility of regeneration alongside the memory of what has been lost.
Babel Tower originates from the prestigious Dalloul Collection, Beirut, founded by Dr Ramzi and Saeda Al Husseini Dalloul and now led by their son, Dr Basel Dalloul. Spanning five decades, the collection reflects the artistic, political and cultural shifts of the Arab world and the family's dedication to preserving and promoting Arab creativity.
Born in Beirut, in 1975, into a lineage of artists that includes his father, Fawzi Baalbaki, and uncle Abdelhamid Baalbaki, Ayman Baalbaki is a Lebanese visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and assemblage. He began his artistic training at the Lebanese University in Beirut, where he received a diploma in Fine Arts in 1998. In 2000, he moved to Paris to pursue a graduate degree in Art-Space from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 2002, and a research postgraduate degree in Art of Images and Contemporary Art from Université Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis in 2003. During the summers of 2001 and 2002, he participated in the Summer Academy at Darat al Funun under the mentorship of the renowned Syrian modernist Marwan Kassab-Bachi, an experience that proved formative for a generation of emerging Arab artists. In 2022, Baalbaki represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale.
His work is held in prominent institutional collections worldwide, including Tate, London; the British Museum, London; Institut du monde arabe, Paris; Farjam Foundation, Dubai; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut.