Siah Armajani was born in 1939, Tehran, and moved to the United States from Iran in 1960. He attended Macalester College in Minnesota, where he studied philosophy, and now lives and works in Minneapolis. His sculptures, drawings and public works exist between the boundaries of art and architecture, informed by democratic and populist ideals. Armajani is recognized as a leading figure in the conceptualisation of the role and function of public art, with nearly one hundred projects realized internationally since the 1960s.

Armajani’s most celebrated public artworks are bridges, walkways and gardens, including the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, 1988, Minneapolis; the World Financial Center’s promenade, in collaboration with Scott Burton and Cesar Pelli, Battery Park City, New York; Gazebo for Two Anarchists, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York; Floating Poetry Room, Ijburg, Amsterdam; Bridge for Iowa City, University of Iowa; and numerous gardens at Villa Arson Museum, Nice. He was commissioned to design the Cauldron for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.

The artist has been the subject of more than fifty solo exhibitions since 1978, including surveys and retrospectives at Parasol unit, London, 2013; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 2008; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, 2007, tour; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1999, tour; Villa Arson, Nice, 1994; Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles (1992); Kunsthalle Basel, 1987; Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster, 1987, tour; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 1985; Armajani’s career retrospective, Follow This Line, at Walker Art Center, 2018, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Spring 2019.