Nairy Baghramian: Jumbled Alphabet

27 Sep 2024-12 Jan 2025

Overview

The SLG presents a major solo exhibition by artist Nairy Baghramian. For over 20 years she has been making sculptures that ask you to reconsider your sense of self, space and relation to the object.  

Made from materials such as marble, wood, metal and resin, her sculptures often respond to the surrounding environment, engaging with architecture and people. Using a wide range of techniques, they subtly explore connections between art and other creative industries, such as interior design, dance and theatre. Whilst at first they appear to be abstract, they are often suggestive of parts of the body, hinting at joints, gestures, limbs, skin and teeth. 

Jumbled Alphabet brings together sculptures from the artist’s Misfits series, disrupting the idea of children’s building toys in which pieces fit together perfectly. Misfits celebrates the beauty of things that don’t fit, and the creativity found in what’s considered “dis-functional”. The series recognises the magic of being an outsider and seeing the potential in imperfection.  

These ideas are taken further in new hybrid sculptures created by Baghramian in a process of exchange with other artists. They play on ideas of the hand-me-down and the fitting together of mismatched parts. This spirit of playful collaboration is also seen in an evolving drawing made by children who visit the SLG during the exhibition.  

ABOUT NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN 

Born in Isfahan, Nairy Baghramian had to flee post-revolutionary Iran as a teenager and has been living and working in Berlin since 1984.  

Baghramian explores forms and concepts inherited from the history of art to address issues of functionality, decoration, abstraction, and feminism. Particularly in her prime medium of sculpture, the artist employs an extensive repertoire of techniques, materials and forms to address the spatial, architectural, social, political and contextual conditions of contemporary art. 

Recent solo shows include those at the Nivola Museum, Sardinia IT (2024), the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO (2023); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX (2022); Carré d’Art, Nimes, France (2022); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2021) and Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan, Italy (2021).

In 2023 she completed her façade commission, Scratching the Back for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Baghramian has also participated at Venice Biennale, Italy (2019 and 2011); Yorkshire Sculpture International, Wakefield, UK (2019); Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany and Athens, Greece (2017); Skulptur Projekte Muenster, Germany (2017 and 2007); Lyon Biennale, France (2017); Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, UK (2012); and the Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014 and 2008). Her works are held in numerous institutional collections around the world. 

Artists

Media