This event was recorded on August 4, 2023 at the Aspen Art Museum, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
As a part of Aspen ArtWeek, listen in for a conversation between Nairy Baghramian, this year’s recipient of the Aspen Award for Art, Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Director of the Aspen Art Museum.
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is artistic director of the Serpentine in London and senior advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. His recent shows include IT’S URGENT at LUMA Arles (2019–21) and Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano (2020). Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2011, was awarded the International Folkwang Prize in 2015, and, most recently, was honored by the Appraisers Association of America with the 2018 Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Nairy Baghramian was born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1971. She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984. Baghramian’s work comprises sculpture and installation often in reference to architecture and the human body. Her work addresses temporal, spatial, and social relationships to language, history, and the present, with forms that materialize in response to contextual conditions or the premises of a given medium. These structures offer the possibility of an open and discursive dialogue in response to a site, or a freeing of the assigned relationship between an object and its meaning.
Recent solo shows include those at Carré d’Art, Nimes, France (2022); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2022); Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM), Milan, Italy (2021); MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2019); Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, Spain (2018); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017); Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium (2016); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland (2016); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2015); Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal (2014); MIT Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013); Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany (2012); the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2012); and Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2010).
Baghramian has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Nasher Prize Laureate (2022); the Zurich Art Prize (2016); the Arnold-Bode Prize, Kassel (2014); the Hector Prize, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2012); and the Ernst Schering Foundation Award (2007). She has participated in the Yorkshire Sculpture International at The Hepworth Wakefield, UK (2019); Venice Biennale, Italy (2019 and 2011); Skulptur Projekte Munster, Germany (2017 and 2007); the 8th and 5th Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014 and 2008); and Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Scotland (2012).