She could see ahead of her, way at the road’s end, the volcano named Fire.
– Jane Bowles ‘A Guatemalan Idyll’, reprinted in South as a State of Mind No. 9 [documenta 14 #4] Fall/Winter 2017.
Some books are bigger than others, especially in how they loom large in life, and at the intersection of their lives. One such book is Nairy Baghramian: Déformation Professionnelle for the exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis that ran from September 7, 2017 to February 4, 2018. Just as this artist’s work has accompanied their lives from the Athens and Kassel of documenta 14, and the family holidays to Madrid and Minneapolis, this book was there for one of their longest days, read from cover to cover over the hours of anxious waiting, one and in proximity to the operating table. Here is not the place to tell this story, only the place to tell, with some relief, that this is not the road’s end of their story.
