Siah Armajani: Follow This Line
The Met Breuer
2019
This exhibition brought together a broad and complex body of work produced over the last 60 years by Iranian artist Siah Armajani. Armajani’s work was always been concerned with social, political and cultural issues, with a particular view and focus on the notion of location or place: “Place is generated in the encounter between the farmer and the house. Place is generated in the things the farmer points out, locates and makes specific.”
![]()
Learning from Armajani’s relational studies and theories on place, the exhibition design is conceived as a system of relationships, allowing the installation itself to be understood as a whole work.
The main gallery space is organized by a grid of points (cases), juxtaposed with a series of lines (display panels). The points house a pivotal work in Armajani’s practice, The Dictionary for Building, allowing it to exist outside the confines of chronology and to draw new relationships with other works. The lines create zones, as opposed to clearly defined galleries, and suggest a way of circulating through the exhibition.
Learning from Armajani’s relational studies and theories on place, the exhibition design is conceived as a system of relationships, allowing the installation itself to be understood as a whole work.
The main gallery space is organized by a grid of points (cases), juxtaposed with a series of lines (display panels). The points house a pivotal work in Armajani’s practice, The Dictionary for Building, allowing it to exist outside the confines of chronology and to draw new relationships with other works. The lines create zones, as opposed to clearly defined galleries, and suggest a way of circulating through the exhibition.