Fallujah 2005

Siah Armajani’s ‘Fallujah’ is a striking three-dimensional structure built of black frames filled with transparent and opaque glass. The work feels like a miniature architectural model, a skeleton of a building, or a doll’s house. Looking at this piece, I wonder what Armajani was thinking about. What was it like to be in his head when he was making this? There’s a sense of layering and transparency that speaks to the complexity of memory and history. The translucent glass makes me think about how we see through things, how we construct meaning from fragments. The toy horse on the middle shelf could be a symbol of childhood, of innocence lost, while the golden sun might represent hope or aspiration. As an artist, Armajani was in conversation with other artists across time, and it’s hard not to think of Kurt Schwitters’s collages and Merzbau when looking at this kind of assemblage. Here, he’s playing with ideas, inviting us to enter into that playful, speculative space, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty. He is encouraging multiple interpretations that shift and evolve with time.