Federico Babina’s New Series Builds Structures Out Of Language And Ideas Following on from our article on his regal deck of cards, architect and illustrator Federico Babina, who we interviewed previously has released his latest collection: Archiwriter. The series, consisting of 27 drawings, personify the writings, periods and locations of writers to build quirky, architectural structures made of words and symbols. Babina commented, “immersed in reading a book it feels like [being] inside an architecture, a metaphysical space surrounded by words”. Slightly murky colours block out the background and the range of idiosyncratic, inventive and at times, sinister, creations sit atop them. From the words of Shakespeare and Proust to the palace of Dostoyevski and the prison of Wright, the drawings are intriguing, multi-faceted and completely original. For years, centuries in some cases, we have seen writers as people and their words as the tale but Federico’s series intertwines them both – the writer becomes inextricably linked to their stories, to the worlds they created and the visions they conjure. Babina believes that the portraits he has created are, “fluctuating vernacular, itinerant, ephemeral, concentric, labyrinthine, surrealist, oneiric, and futuristic.”, and we agree.
