Nairy Baghramian is an Iranian-born German sculptor whose work challenges expectations of form, space, and the body. Fleeing post-revolutionary Iran as a teenager, she settled in Berlin in 1984 and has built an international career exploring sculpture's precarious relationships to architecture, history, and human presence. Her installations often lean, drape, or fragment, inviting viewers to reconsider stability and meaning in art.
Nairy Baghramian creates sculptures and installations that question the very expectations placed on form, space, and the body. Born in Iran to an Armenian family, she fled post-revolutionary Iran as a teenager and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984. Her practice stands out for its conceptual rigor and material experimentation. It addresses themes of vulnerability, authority, and the politics of display in contemporary art.
Baghramian was born in 1971 in Isfahan, Iran. She grew up in a turbulent period and left the country with her family as a teenager. They settled in Berlin in 1984. There, she studied at the Berlin University of the Arts. In addition to her artistic training, she worked at a women’s shelter founded by her sister. These early experiences shaped her sensitivity to issues of displacement, support, and human fragility.
Baghramian began exhibiting in the early 2000s. She quickly gained attention for sculptures that engage with architectural contexts and the history of minimalism and surrealism. Her works often use materials such as silicone, resin, steel, leather, and wax. These evoke body parts, prosthetics, or interior elements while refusing literal representation. She explores how objects lean, depend on supports, or exist in precarious balance. This reflects broader ideas about dependence, autonomy, and social relations.
Key solo exhibitions include presentations at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the Aspen Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade commission in New York, and the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid. Her site-specific installations, such as those for Art Basel or outdoor sculpture parks, transform public spaces into choreographies of form. Works like the *Modèle vivant* series draw from live modeling traditions. They examine trauma, posture, and the provisional nature of the body. Baghramian has participated in major events including Documenta 14, the Venice Biennale, and Skulptur Projekte Münster.
Baghramian has received significant accolades. These include the Nasher Prize in 2022, the Zürich Art Prize, and the Art Basel Awards Gold in 2025. Her pieces are held in prominent collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate, and Centre Pompidou. Critics praise her ability to blend historical references with fresh, often humorous or critical perspectives on sculpture. She continues to push the medium’s boundaries through ongoing experimentation with site, material, and expectation.
I understood very early on the difference between an artwork and the idea of a prop. A prop on the stage is the result of a narration. An artwork, however, contains the narration within itself.
— Nairy Baghramian