Nairy Baghramian: nameless

WIELS presents a new exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Nairy Baghramian. An expansive presentation across multiple floors of the WIELS Blomme building, nameless brings together several previously unseen bodies of work in dialogue with the post-industrial architecture.

Through her sculptures, spatial installations, photographs, and drawings, Baghramian has developed a bold practice characterised by the combination of diverse visual languages—from biomorphic structures to design elements and industrial forms. Her vision is widely recognised for reinvigorating contemporary sculpture. In her investigation of form, function and production in relation to the sociopolitical context, she draws from disciplines as diverse as dance, fashion, theatre, interior architecture.  

Baghramian draws inspiration from her observations and encounters with the work of avant-garde artists such as Katarzyna Kobro, Jean Arp, Isamu Noguchi, and Wols, who fled Europe as exiles in the 1930s. Stripped of familiar tools, studios, language, and stable living conditions, these artists continued to create under extreme constraints. Their provisional and precarious creations—often made for basic survival—reflect the impermanence, 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. Baghramian reflects on the precarious condition of such works, conjuring the need for a condition of existence for them ‘outside’ the rigidity of language, codes, and names—a concern that resonates beyond the geopolitical crises of the present. 

The exhibition marks Baghramian’s return to WIELS, after her participation in the pre-opening group exhibition Expats and Clandestines (2007) and reactivates the dialogue with the architecture of WIELS and its artistic and intellectual environment. 

Curator: Dirk Snauwaert

With the support of:

Exhibition Circle: Dhr. en Mevr. Antoine & Isabelle Bosteels, M. et Mme Peter & Nathalie Hrechdakian, Mrs Elisa Nuyten, Mme Lucy Pereira, Dhr. en Mevr. Guido & Griet Van Middelem - Dupont

Hauser & Wirth, Kurimanzutto, Marian Goodman Gallery

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Goethe Institut