Nairy Baghramian makes sculptures that ask you to think about your sense of self, space and relation to the object. Made from materials such as marble, wood, metal and resin, her work often responds to the surrounding environment, engaging with architecture and people.
Her exhibition at the South London Gallery, Jumbled Alphabet, is her first major solo show in a London institution in fourteen years. Find out more about Baghramian and her work.
1. Her sculptures remind viewers of body parts
While Baghramian’s works appear to be abstract, they often suggest parts of the body. The shapes hint at joints, limbs, flesh, skin or teeth. Her work is familiar, personal and human, while at the same time can feel alien to us.
At the SLG Fire Station galleries, visitors are invited to touch the works. This physical interaction expands further on the ways that her sculptures are connected to our bodies.
Baghramian is interested in the idea of the ‘membrane’ as a skin between things. The artist says “‘For me, the thin skin, the membrane, is often overlooked and underrepresented, but it is this thin, permeable, vulnerable skin that I value so much……I am interested in the thin membrane that separates the inside from the outside in physical and social spaces. It’s about inclusion or exclusion.”
2. She is inspired by children’s toys
Baghramian’s series of sculptures titled Misfits are inspired by children’s building toys, where certain pieces fit together perfectly. She wants to disrupt this way of thinking. Her work celebrates the beauty of things that don’t fit and the creativity of the so-called “dis-functional”. Misfits recognises the magic of being an outsider and seeing the potential in imperfection.
Some of the sculptures look as though they could almost fit together. The works in the SLG’s main gallery are arranged as if a game is in play, perhaps abandoned halfway. The title of each sculpture includes a letter of the alphabet. This suggests there might be a correct order of how they are placed. In reality, all the pieces clearly don’t naturally fit together. There is no ‘right’ answer to this puzzle. Everything becomes possible, and the potential for creative solutions is endless.
As the artist quotes in jumbled letters on the tote bag she designed for the show, “there is no such thing as a perfect idea.”
3. She often collaborates with other artists
Nairy Baghramian resists the stereotype of the isolated artist. She has a long standing practice of partnering with fellow artists to co-create works of art. Londoners may remember her 2010 exhibition with artist Phyllida Barlow at the Serpentine Galleries.
At the SLG, she is collaborating with both visitors and artists. In the Fire Station galleries, young people are invited to get creative themselves and respond directly to her work. Children can sit at and draw directly on tables and chairs. This wooden furniture has been co-created with Nicolas Hsiung.
Baghramian often shifts solo projects and exhibitions into collective experiences. Both Barlow and Hsiung were also included in her 2024 exhibition at Museo Nivola, Pratza ’e Domo. A Semiotic House That Was Never Built. This group show brought together work by previous collaborator Janette Laverrière, as well as Oscar Murillo and several other artists.
In recent years she has been in regular dialogue with artist Julie Mehretu. Baghramian made sculptural frames for Mehretu’s Transpaintings which were also included in Ensemble, an exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in 2024.
Nairy Baghramian: Jumbled Alphabet, 2024. South London Gallery. Photo: Jo Underhill
4. Her work plays with ideas of opposites and binaries
Baghramian is interested in opposites, such as masculine and feminine or inside and outside. She always thinks about how they come to exist and considering the spaces between the two positions. Her aim is to challenge accepted hierarchies and blur dividing lines. Her work encourages us to think about how opposing ideas exist in conflict, harmony, and in between the two.
Her exploration of and play with opposites is also evident in her use of materials. Shiny, polished metals and brightly-coloured resins are shown alongside sculptures in matte wood and natural stone. The actual texture and weight of Baghramian’s sculptures often contradicts their appearances. Visitors to the SLG comment that the small, aluminium sculptures look soft. One visitor said: “She does a good job making them look squishy. I am surprised they are aluminium!”
5. She created The Met façade commission in 2023
Last year, Baghramian was commissioned to create a new work for façade of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York.. Titled Scratching the Back, her cast aluminum polychrome sculptures feature components that seem to have washed up like debris from a ship wreck or abandoned objects.
These abstract forms at the museum’s entrance examined the institution as a filter of historical fragments that are considered representative or exemplary. The project’s title, Scratching the Back, is a distortion of the idiom “scratch the surface”. It hints at the need to move beyond superficially constructed cultural narratives.
Nairy Baghramian: Jumbled Alphabet is free to visit at the South London Gallery and open from 27 Sep 2024 – 12 Jan 2025.
Wear your own piece of Baghramian’s jumbled alphabet. Shop our tote bag, designed in collaboration with the artist, online now.
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