Nairy Baghramian. Pratza 'e domo. A semiotic house that has never been built

The book was created on the occasion of the Pratza 'e domo exhibition. A semiotic house never built, held at Museo Nivola in Orani (Sardinia, Italy) in the summer of 2024 as the final act of Premio Nivola for 2023, awarded to sculptor Nairy Baghramian (1971, Isfahan, Iran), one of the most important artists of her generation. Through sculpture, photography, drawing and installation, and with an abstract language rooted in the history of modernism, Baghramian addresses the most pressing aesthetic, political and social issues of our time. The artist turns the personal exhibition into a collective project in fieri, reflecting on the home as a utopian space never built, but nevertheless imagined, made credible by the evocation of the very possibility of its existence. A temporary environment in which to develop or shelve ideas and projects, in a process of continuous elaboration and assembly of fragments. The title 'Pratza "e domo" (literally "house square") takes up the expression that - in Sardinia - designates the space in front of a house: an area of transition that is not clearly delimited, at once private and public, individual and collective. This concept is linked to the idea of the 'semiotic house never built', which has appeared in Baghramian's thinking since 2008, as a key to exploring the boundaries between public and private space, outside and inside, sense of belonging and foreignness. The book, with essays by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda and Andrea Lissoni, explores Baghramian's creative universe, retracing her career, addressing her recurring themes - the unfinished, the unrealized, the apparent fragility, the prosthetic and the ephemeral - and highlighting the persistence, in the artist's work, of the collective and collaborative dimension, as opposed to the individualist macho idea of the solitary tormented artist-hero.