WIELS presents a new exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Nairy Baghramian (German, born in Iran, 1971). An expansive presentation across multiple floors of the WIELS Blomme building, the exhibition features several unseen bodies of work in dialogue with WIELS’ brutalist, post-industrial architecture.
Combining morphologies, from the biomorphic to design features and industrial forms, Baghramian’s vision is widely recognised for reinvigorating contemporary sculpture. In her investigation of form, function and production in relation to the social political context, she draws from disciplines as diverse as dance, fashion, theatre, interior architecture—using materials like metal, glass, silicone, resin, wax or cork. Her aesthetic is marked by this large diversity of techniques and materials, and shaped through precise methods of fabrication.
Baghramian’s sculptural works are complex, sensitive reflections on the reltionships between the human body within architectural environments and sociological observation. It also demonstrates her capacity to imagine and integrate unfamiliar dimensions of texture, surface, territory and form—affirming an autonomy and independence of aesthetic experience and art.
Baghramian takes inspiration from decade long observations and encounters with works produced by avant-garde artists such as Katarzyna Kobro, Jean Arp, Isamu Noguchi, Wols, etc. during their exiles from fascist and autocratic regimes in 1930s Europe. Displaced, disoriented and deprived of ateliers, tools, familiar language or stable living condiJons, many of these artists persisted in the production of work under immense constraints. Their provisional and precarious creations—ocen made for basic survival —resonate with the impermanence, fragmentation, reduction and displacement that are at the centre of Baghramian’s artistic practice.
nameless examines the forces that shape the displacement and statelessness of sculptures and objects, raising questions that persist across time. Baghramian reflects on the precarious condition of such works, conjuring the need for a condiJon of existence for them ‘outside’ the rigidity of language, codes and names—a concern that resonates beyond the geopolitical crises of the present moment, including the affirmation of identitarian, nationalistic definiJons and the resulting restrictions on movement and freedom.
Presented in the exhibition are new bodies of sculpture which continue Bahgramian’s investigation of the proto-rational, continuing the thought on the ‘informe’ and the abject— playing with disruptions of form, function and sense. A new series departs from the ocenspectacular neon and glass signage commonly used for advertising in public spaces. By liberating these signs from their direct communicative tasks, Baghramian deprives them of their function, thereby enabling free associations and relations. She reinstitutes to the handshaped signs their poetic freedom, and engages with WIELS’ historic silo through a sculptural intervention. The group of wax casted works titled Selves suggest a presence that remains impossible to define—preceding a name or the affirmation of personhood and existence.
A morphological and conceptual arJculaJon throughout the exhibition is the presence of the artist’s drawings and objects tiled Side Leaps. These similar titled and not dated creations are not preparations or studies for future sculptures but function as tools of liberation and continuation in demanding environments and take their definiton from exploraJon of gestures, textures, rhythms and presences. The drawings are accompanied by elements from her photographic work, playfully suggesting the contexts and spaces she explores with her work and situating her sculptural practice within the tactile, bodily and material dimension.The exhibition marks Baghramian’s return to WIELS, acer her participation in the preopening group exhibition Expats and Clandes3nes (2007), and reacJvates the dialogue with the architecture of WIELS and its artistic and intellectual environment.
Press release from WEILS
Image: Nairy Baghramian. Side Leaps. 2025. Image courtesy of the artist
