Iranian-German artist Nairy Baghramian has built her reputation on creating sculptures that celebrate life without boundaries, transforming her experience of fleeing political persecution into art that challenges conventional expectations. The 54-year-old artist, who escaped Iran with her family at age 13, now operates from her Berlin studio where she continues to push the limits of contemporary sculpture.
Baghramian first gained international recognition in 2007 with a modest, screen-like structure erected in the parking lot of Skulptur Projekte Münster in western Germany. The minimalist installation, resembling scaffolding, could have easily gone unnoticed but served to obscure views and divide the parking area into two spaces, making a subtle statement about boundaries and segregation. Since then, she has become known for embracing marginality and tackling political subjects like exclusion and integration, always with playful levity.
The artist's approach to sculpture reflects her personal philosophy of maintaining tension between center and periphery. "My sculptures need a certain rootlessness, some playfulness, so I don't become too monumental in my thinking," Baghramian explains from her apartment in Berlin's western Charlottenburg neighborhood. Her works often feature mottled textures and eccentric compositions infused with dark humor, while soft materials like wax and silicone poke fun at the permanence of traditional sculpture.
Born in Isfahan in central Iran in 1971 to a teacher mother and building contractor father, Baghramian's family fled the country when she was 13 years old. "My father, sister and brother were imprisoned in Iran under the mullahs – for speaking, for thinking, for existing," she recalls. The family's relocation to Berlin offered more than escape; it provided a chance to imagine a life unbound by oppression. Her family, who were vocal critics of both the Shah and later the Islamic Republic, taught her the spirit of dissent that now shapes both her art and her identity as an artist.
As a teenager in 1980s Berlin, Baghramian immersed herself in the city's theater, dance and music scenes, experiences she credits with pushing her towards sculpture and discovering multiple ways of inhabiting form. She also became involved in social causes, working at a women's shelter while studying at university. This foundation of resistance and social awareness continues to influence her artistic practice today.
Baghramian's latest exhibition, titled "nameless," opens this month at Wiels in Brussels and exemplifies her commitment to challenging expectations. Spread across two floors, the show features drawings, wall-mounted pieces, and a new series of glass sculptures created in collaboration with Murano and Veneto glassmakers – a first for the artist. "Everybody's expecting my next pieces to be larger, bigger, more. So I thought I would go against myself," she says wryly. "The exhibition is all about ephemerality and invisibility."
Recent years have brought Baghramian significant recognition in the art world. She has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Documenta 14 in Kassel, created work for the façade of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and won the Nasher Prize, awarded biennially to artists who have significantly advanced sculpture. Her works now regularly sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and in 2023 she was photographed for a Loewe campaign alongside curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and actress Aubrey Plaza.
The artist's approach to career milestones reflects her unconventional philosophy. When offered retrospectives at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center and Ghent's SMAK in 2017, she insisted on producing new pieces in response to her previous works rather than simply displaying existing art. "I enjoy taking opportunities to be challenged. Save the retrospectives for some rainy afternoon," she states.
While it's tempting to connect her fragile figures and their pervasive sense of transience to her early life marked by revolution and political persecution, Baghramian resists autobiographical or overtly political readings of her work. "I believe in the autonomy of the art object," she explains. "Once you start giving concrete answers, the work stops being interesting." However, her 2023 façade commission for New York's Metropolitan Museum prompted critic Roberta Smith to observe that Baghramian's fragmented works, leaning from their alcoves and seemingly on the verge of departing, reminded her of refugees.
The Brussels exhibition explores themes of transience through recent drawings and maquettes that Wiels director Dirk Snauwaert describes as reflecting her "doodling, automatic practice," connecting it to the surrealist tradition of automatic drawing. Baghramian has collected old neon signs that will be melted down and reblown by artisans into curvaceous abstract forms, emptied of their former meaning as advertising signs. "It is a reminiscence of the tradition of neon lettering, stripped of its function, like a whisper," she describes.
The show carries deeper meaning about sculpture's potential for renewal. "It's about how sculpture has the potential in difficult times to recreate and reshape itself," Baghramian explains. "Something positive always involves a collapse and a re-creation, to create something that's always built on each other, pushing things out, building again, assembling things again." This philosophy of constant reconstruction and renewal reflects both her personal journey and her artistic vision.
Baghramian's Berlin apartment, shared with longtime partner and former gallerist Michel Ziegler, serves as another expression of her aesthetic philosophy. The space resembles what she describes as "a very chic crèche," featuring oversized pillows shaped like cat faces resting on amorphous benches by Swiss-French designer Janette Laverrière, dusty-pink sofas designed by director Luca Guadagnino, and silver mobiles dangling gracefully from the ceiling.
The "nameless" exhibition at Wiels Brussels runs from October 25 until March 1, 2026, offering visitors an opportunity to experience Baghramian's unique vision of sculpture as a celebration of impermanence and transformation. Through her work, the artist continues to demonstrate that true artistic freedom comes from embracing uncertainty and finding beauty in the spaces between definition and dissolution.
