Nasher Sculpture Center announces an open call for participation in the 2022 Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium, which aims to expand scholarship on the field of contemporary sculpture in its many forms. Submissions should address themes related to the work of the 2022 Nasher Prize Laureate Nairy Baghramian.
The Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium—dedicated to the work of Baghramian and open to graduate students from around the world, studying in any field—will take place virtually from January 18–21, 2022. The multi-day event will address a broad audience of art historians and museum professionals, allowing symposium participants to receive feedback from fellow presenters, the moderator, the keynote speaker, and audience members. This year’s symposium will be moderated by Dr. Catherine Craft, curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Students selected to present papers will also have their work published in the annual symposium compendium, together with the paper delivered by the keynote speaker, Miwon Kwon, the Walter Hopps Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art, Department of Art History, UCLA.
Suggested topics for the 2022 Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium:
–Reconsiderations of sculptural traditions
–Intersection of design and sculpture
–Architecture and the body
–Vulnerability and authority
–Failure as artwork
Complete proposals must include the following:
–Contact information, participant’s field and university affiliation, and CV
–Paper title and abstract of no more than 200 words, and 3 to 5 keywords
Proposals are due by Friday, November 19, 2021.
Students selected to participate will have their papers published in the annual Nasher Prize Graduate Student Symposium compendium which will be published in April 2022 in tandem with the award gala.
Send submissions and questions to symposium [at] nashersculpturecenter.org
About Nairy Baghramian, 2022 Nasher Prize Laureate
Nairy Baghramian is a German citizen born in 1971 in Iran. She is a visual artist living and working in Berlin since 1984. Her work explores the relation of modeling, molding, and casting—interrelated elements of sculpture production involving positive and negative forms, and she consistently humanizes this largely mechanical process through overt or oblique references to the body. Using an abstract vocabulary that often combines geometric and organic forms, as well as industrial materials and processes with elements that appear soft and supple, Baghramian highlights the subtle ligatures uniting disparate human activities.
Baghramian was a nominee of 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). Her works are held in institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City; Jumex Museum, Mexico City; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Upcoming solo exhibitions of Nairy Baghramian include Secession, Vienna AT, 2021; and Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France, April 2022. Baghramian will be the subject of a long-planned solo exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center, unaffiliated with the Nasher Prize, in fall 2022.
