Gazira Babeli

Todd Deutsch

Gazira Babeli has been living and working as an artist, performer and film-maker in Second Life since spring 2006.
In September 2006 she published records of a number of “non authorized performances” on the web, capturing the attention of art critics and artists. Artists above all. She then became part of Second Front, a new international group of artists/performers dedicated to the formal, aesthetic, cultural and social exploration of a reality dubbed “virtual”.
She was involved in the launch of the first native artistic community in Second Life: Odyssey.
In April 2007, after filming the movie/performance Gaz of The Desert, she staged an exhibition entitled [Collateral Damage]. The show, which gathered a year of work and experiences, was visited by over one thousand “real” people.
Gazira Babeli has taken part in various festivals and events outside Second Life, including: Peam2006 (Pescara), DEAF07 (Rotterdam), V07 Venice Videoart Fair and SHOWOFF Contemporary Art Fair (Fabio Paris Art Gallery); with Second Front: iMAL (Brussels) and Performa (New York). Her work has attracted the attention of publications such as El Pais, La Stampa, Liberazione, SPIEGEL ONLINE, Exibart, Kunstzeitung, CIAC and Flash Art.
Most of Gazira Babeli’s works are currently archived in the Locusolus region of Second Life.

Earned his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
His photographs depicting family, young sons, and the culture of boyhood toys and games have been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Pingyao International Photo Festival, Pingyao, China, and the Minnesota Center for Photography, Minneapolis.
In 2005, Deutsch received a University of Minnesota/McKnight Foundation Photography Fellowship for Gamers,
an ongoing project about videogame culture and male adolescence. Selections from the series are included in Photography Now: 100 Portfolios, a DVD ROM survey of contemporary photography published by Wright State University, and Gamescenes: Art in the Age of Videogames, published by Johan & Levi, Milan.
His work can also be found in private and public collections including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and TRIS- Escuela de Fotografia, Montevideo, Uruguay.
He lives in Minneapolis and teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at the College of Saint Catherine.