“A bridge divides what is ‘above’ the bridge, what is ‘below’ the bridge, what is ‘before’ the bridge and what is ‘after’ the bridge, but at the same time it brings totality and turns it into a neighborhood.”—Siah Armajani

Siah Armajani (1939–2020, born Lahijan, Iran) left his native Iran to study at Macalester College in St. Paul in 1960, when he was 21, and called Minnesota home thereafter until his death last year. Throughout his career, Armajani blurred the boundaries between architecture, art, philosophy, and his personal experiences. This installation of Armajani’s work celebrates a core facet of his practice, the act of bridging: creating spaces and structures that both divide and connect. For Armajani, bridging also illustrated the intersection between cultures at which many immigrants stand. 

Armajani’s work has been exhibited and collected by numerous museums in the United States and abroad. In 2011, he was awarded the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and received the McKnight Foundation’s Distinguished Artist Award. In 2018–2019, his work was featured by the Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a survey exhibition, “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line.”

Explore the Exhibition