Bady Dalloul is Drawing History, Stamp Size

History has always been a point of view. Bady Dalloul has built his entire practice around proving it. 

In this episode of Forward Moves, host Raja Haddad sits down in Paris with Bady Dalloul—French-Syrian multimedia artist whose work spans drawing, collage, objects, and installation—to trace a practice built on imaginary nations, miniature archives, and the deliberate blurring of fact and fiction. From inventing fictional countries with his brother during summers vacationing in Damascus when they were young, to a lesson in Byzantine art history that cracked open everything he thought he knew about who gets to tell the story, Bady's work is less about documenting history and more about exposing how it's made. 

He didn't plan any of it. He was just a kid cutting pictures out of his grandparents' books to fill the scrapbook pages of an imaginary nation called Badland. What followed—fine arts training in Paris, exhibitions from Tokyo to Doha, and a major traveling work, Land of Dreams—reads less like a career and more like a lifelong question that keeps getting deeper. 

This episode outlines what it means to make work that protects the people whose stories it carries—and why, for Bady, working small is never a limitation. It's an invitation. 

You will listen to different narratives: 

• The genesis: Inventing Badland and Jadland with his brother during Damascus summers—and why that childhood game never really ended 
• History as point of view: The Byzantine art history lesson that revealed official knowledge as constructed—and gave Bady license to intervene 
• Growing under magnificent trees: Finding his own entry point as the son of two established artists 
• Fiction as protection: How blurring fact and fiction can be an act of care—making difficult testimonies listenable without stripping them of their truth 
• The matchbox as archive: Working at human scale, and why forcing viewers to lean in sets the pace of how a story lands 
• Land of Dreams: Drawing parallels between his own migration to Japan and his parents' journey from Syria to Paris 
• Bady's story is a reminder that the most powerful archives aren't always the official ones. Sometimes they're drawn in miniature, on a matchbox, by someone who had to invent a country just to have somewhere to put everything they felt. 
• Tune in, subscribe to the show, and join us as we chart the creative journeys shaping the Middle East. And if you feel like it, share your thoughts by sending us a message. Until then—keep moving forward. 
  
  
  Episode Timeline: 
  00:01:25 - Welcome & Introducing Bady Dalloul
  00:03:33 - Growing Up Between Paris and Damascus 
  00:08:06 - Badland and Jadland: The Genesis
  00:12:46 - Art History as Point of View
  00:15:34 - Finding Your Own Shade
  00:17:22 - Archive, Intimacy, and the Daily Drawing Practice 
  00:19:31 - Blurring Fact and Fiction
  00:24:37 - The Matchbox Series
  00:30:15 - Living and Working in the Same Space
  00:32:19 - Japan, Migration, and Land of Dreams
  00:41:41 - Can Art Change History?
  00:43:11 - Rapid Fire Questions 
  
  Connect with Bady Dalloul 
  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badydalloul/ 
  Website: https://thethirdline.com/artists/79-bady-dalloul/ 
  
  Connect with Raja Haddad | Forward_Moves
  YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcast
  Instagram: https://www.inst

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