“Philosophy gave me clear direction about what to do and how to go about it.” In a wide-ranging discussion with exhibition co-curator Victoria Sung, Minneapolis-based artist Siah Armajani discusses his practice over six decades; his approach to (and critique of) public art; his perspectives on politics in the US today and in Iran, the country of his birth; key works (including the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden); and the new exhibition, Siah Armajani: Follow This Line.
A Builder in Search of Home: Remembering Siah Armajani (1939–2020)
"For Siah Armajani, building was more than an intellectual exercise: it was also a search for home," writes Victoria Sung in remembrance of the Tehran-born, Minneapolis-based artist who passed away August 27 at age 81. Best known for pioneering public artworks that exist at the intersection of art and architecture, Armajani's six-decade career saw the artist exploring science, politics, and place, all in service to a deeply personal philosophy of being.
Profane Illuminations: The Early Works of Siah Armajani
"In retrospect, considering the unfolding of events during the Iranian revolution of 1979, we can say that Armajani’s early works were prophetic—although not divine," writes Hamed Yousefi in the catalogue for Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, which closes at Met Breuer on June 2. "He offered profane illuminations, informed by class consciousness, materialist history, and inversions to the cultural temporality of artistic lineage."
"My first question was how might the concept of tracing become a conceptual thread that would formally tie the book together?" Aryn Beitz shares a behind-the-scenes look at the process that birthed the intricately layered, 448-page exhibition catalogue for Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, now on view at the Met Breuer.
While his series Seven Rooms of Hospitality constitutes a clear indictment of the nationalist politics that have produced the global refugee crisis, Siah Armajani also finds hope in the project, attempting to revive the revolutionary internationalist energy of the avant-garde, alongside the communal impulse of vernacular American building.
On October 11, the art collective Slavs and Tatars gave the performance-lecture, Red-Black Thread, in conjunction with the exhibition Siah Armajani: Follow This Line. The event, the collective notes, “addresses the construction of race, namely blackness, from the perspective of Russia, the Soviet Union, and communism." Watch it here.
Public Sculpture in the Context of American Democracy: A Manifesto by Siah Armajani
“Public art does not mean large works of art in public space,” Siah Armajani has said. Rather, “the critical condition is art which finds itself in the social context.” Given this definition, one could say Armajani has always made public art, from the "night letters" he created in the 1950s (political leaflets that would circulate under the cover of night) to his series of Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Rooms from the 1980s and ’90s. On the occasion of Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, we present Armajani’s important manifesto on public art's relationship to democracy.
Slavs and Tatars: Siah Armajani, Red-Black Thread, and the Art and Act of Reading
"Reading is a civic act. As much as we are suckers for the oral, the written word manages to constitute a social body in ways too often lacking today: a rigor in terms of focus, a polyphony of voices." In conversation with designer Aryn Beitz, the Berlin-based art collective Slavs and Tatars discusses its contributions to the Siah Armajani: Follow This Line exhibition and catalogue, both of which strive to attain what it claims Armajani has mastered: the ability to engage and create a public by suggesting reading, without actually requiring it.
Following the line of Siah Armajani's diverse practice, Sebastian Eising looks at work created over the 60 years of the Minneapolis-based artist's career, from his earliest works, created in the late 1950s while still living in Iran, to his more recent explorations of politics, philosophy, public space, technology, and architecture.
Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is the first comprehensive US retrospective devoted to the work of Minneapolis-based artist Siah Armajani. This groundbreaking exhibition spans six decades of the artist’s studio practice and engages a range of references—from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter, and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the Abstract Expressionist canvas to the vernacular architecture of rural America, Bauhaus design, and Russian Constructivism.
The War of Sovereign Identities: Surveying the International Cultural Landscape for Iranians Today
Using her father's 1979 passport as a touchstone, US-based Iranian contemporary art scholar Golnar Yarmohammad Touski looks at the recent history of the country artist Siah Armajani left behind when he moved to Minnesota in 1960 and the cultural and political realities faced by Iranians working internationally in the arts today.
Under Wraps: What’s Happening with the Walker’s Siah Armajani Bridge?
Weekend travelers to downtown Minneapolis this month will meet an impasse on Interstate 94, marked by an ominous sight: all lanes of traffic closed and the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge—crossing from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to Loring Park—encased in plastic. Here's what's going on.
Not a Conduit but a Place: John Ashbery Reads his Poem for Siah Armajani’s Bridge
On the occasion of John Ashbery's passing on September 3 we share audio of the famed poet reading his Walker-commissioned poem, a site-specific meditation on movement, place, and order that since 1988 has graced the 375-foot expanse of Siah Armajani's bridge over the interstate highway.
