Biography • Zeigam Azizov

Zeigam Azizov is British artist and philosopher. He was born on the 13th of April 1963 in the former USSR, (Azerbaijan SSR) and currently lives and works in London (UK). His work addresses questions of time, image and the narrative procedures of globalisation with the languages of migration, media and the new mimesis. He uses material that resembles means of writing and media images and transforming them into the conceptual art to comment on the philosophical elaboration of the technologically constructed time.

He was trained in art, philosophy and cultural theory in the UK, France and Austria. He completed his studies in philosophy in England in the early 1990s, what he couldn’t receive in the former Soviet Union for ideological reasons, although initially planned to devote himself to philosophy completely. Later he started his PhD in philosophy first at Goldsmiths University of London (UK) and completed at the Klagenfurt University(Austria) with the thesis on the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s work and a philosophical exploration of images.

Since the middle of 1980s actively involved in the art world, exhibiting and publishing his work as well as developing the body of work which brings together his philosophical interests. Taking his artistic studies as a philosophical activity , ‘art as philosophy, philosophy as art’, he has exhibited and written texts about his projects extensively.

He is one of the pioneering artists to study the ‘migration paradigm’ as a novel understanding of the movement of globalization and space-time relationships, what he calls ‘migrasophia’ (migration+philosophy). Since 1993 this project was partly made in the collaboration with the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who became a close friend and collaborator.

He exhibited his work worldwide, including most recently: the Venice Biennale (Azerbaijan pavilion, 2019, 2011 and the main exhibiton of the Venice Biennale ,2003 (Utopia Station)), Tate Modern, London, UK (2006), House der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2004), Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2002), and TN Probe, Tokyo, Japan (2001) among others.

As a part of his practice he has been lecturing and teaching in different universities including the University of California, Central St.Martin’s College of Art and Design, Goldsmiths University of London, Vienna Academy of Art and the University of Aberdeen, University of Klagenfurt, Middlesex University. He also lectured worldwide in galleries and museums.