Nairy Baghramian

Nairy Baghramian was born in Isfahan, Iran in 1971. She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984. Baghramian's work comprises sculpture and installation often in reference to architecture and the human body. Her work addresses temporal, spatial and social relationships to language, history, and the present, with forms which materialize in response to contextual conditions or the premises of a given medium. These structures offer the possibility of an open and discursive dialogue in response to a site, or a freeing of the assigned relationship between an object and its meaning. 

Recent solo shows include those at Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2023); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2022); Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan, Italy (2021); MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2019); Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, Spain (2018); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017); Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium (2016); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland (2016); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2015); Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal (2014); MIT Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013); and the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany (2012). In 2023 Baghramian unveiled her façade commission Scratching the Back, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Her many awards include the Nivola Award for Sculpture (2023); the Nasher Prize Laureate (2022); the Zurich Art Prize (2016); the Arnold-Bode Prize, Kassel (2014); the Hector Prize, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2012); and the Ernst Schering Foundation Award (2007). She has participated in the Yorkshire Sculpture International at The Hepworth Wakefield, UK (2019); Venice Biennale, Italy (2019 and 2011); Skulptur Projekt Munster, Germany (2017 and 2007); the 8th and 5th Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014 and 2008); and Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Scotland (2012).