Baghramian’s works are as resistant to biographical readings as they are to the fixity of language. The museum wall text states that she is German, born in Iran to an Armenian family. Though her work eschews the specificity of this three-staged cultural displacement, it does allude to the conditions of exile. Exile demands adaptation and flexibility, but also brings with it a perceptual shift. Place, culture, society, language, all appear different when one comes from elsewhere. With time they may be observed from both inside and outside, however, in a perceptual doubling. “Sculpture is never transcendent—it alters itself under the force of circumstance,” she said in a recent interview.Here again is the responsive approach, to speak to the conditions of creative production and its necessity under adversity rather than make specific pronouncements or draw up battle lines.

Kirsty Bell, Nairy Baghramian’s “nameless”, in: Criticism - e-flux (15.01.2026).