The Spring 2024 Graduate Art guest lecture series, organized by Jack Bankowsky

Nairy Baghramian in conversation with Paulina Pobocha

This event is free & open to the public. RSVP’s are not required.

See the full Spring 2024 Seminar schedule here.

Nairy Baghramian(b. 1971, Isfahan, Iran) is a visual artist living and working in Berlin. Her work addresses temporal, spatial and social relationships to language, history, and the present, with forms that materialize in response to either contextual conditions or the premises of a given medium. These structures offer the possibility of an open and discursive dialogue, a freeing of the assigned relationship between an object and its meaning. Her work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions in institutions, including Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (2023); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2022); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2022), Galleria d'arte Moderne, Milan, Italy (2021); Festival d’ Automne á Paris at École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (2018); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2018); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2016); Museo de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2014); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2014); and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2006).

Baghramian participated in the Venice Biennale (2019 and 2011); Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017); Skulptur Project Muenster (2017 and 2007); Lyon Biennale (2017); and the Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014 and 2008). She was a nominee for the Hugo Boss Prize 2020 and has been the recipient of the Malcolm-McLaren-Award with Maria Hassabi (2019), the Zurich Art Prize (2016); the Arnold-Bode Prize, Kassel (2014); the Hector Prize, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2012); and the Ernst Schering Foundation Award (2007).

Recent exhibitions include YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Scratching the Back, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (both ongoing). Her works are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Solomon Guggenheim Collection, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Tate Modern, London, UK; and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Paulina Pobocha is an art historian, writer, and curator currently based in Los Angeles, where she recently joined the Hammer Museum as senior curator. In her previous post at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Pobocha’s curatorial efforts (solo or collaborative) included YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden (2023); Guadalupe Maravilla: Luz y fuerza (2021); Constantin Brancusi Sculpture (2019); The Long Run (2017); Rachel Harrison: Perth Amboy (2016); Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (2014); and Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store (2013). Pobocha is currently preparing a much-anticipated retrospective exhibition that examines the fifty-year career of sculptor, Thomas Schütte, scheduled to open at the Museum of Modern Art in September 2024, and her forthcoming book, Mike Kelley: Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, will accompany the presentation of the work for which it is titled at MOMA this December.

Image credits: Photo of Nairy Baghramian courtesy of Writer. Photo of Paulina Pobocha by Daniel Terna

The Graduate Art Seminar is a forum for graduate students and members of the ArtCenter community to enter into dialog with internationally recognized artists, critics, and art historians. The Seminar is a core component of ArtCenter's Graduate Art program. The Seminar is also free and open to the public.

ArtCenter's Graduate Art program is based on intensive studio practice and rigorous academic coursework. The program is distinguished by its low faculty-to-student ratio, which provides students with the attention and feedback they need to refine and achieve their artistic goals. Faculty and students are artists working in all genres of film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. A significant number of alumni have achieved national and international acclaim and often return to share their insights and expertise as visiting faculty and guest lecturers.