In celebration of the selection of Nairy Baghramian as the recipient of the 2022 Nasher Prize, the Nasher Sculpture Center presents sculptures from her recent series Misfits, including a new work created by the artist for this installation. Since the 1990s, Baghramian has explored elements of sculptural practice and installation to create works that challenge their settings and upend expected modes of presentation as well as the social, political, and historical contexts informing them. Using an abstract vocabulary that combines geometric and organic forms, she highlights the subtle connections underlying varied human activities, often through overt or oblique references to the body./// Baghramian’s Misfits series takes its inspiration from the concept of the playground as well as the resonance between interlocking children’s toys and modernist sculptural forms. Rendered in varnished aluminum, marble, and wood, the sculptures evoke the capacity of such toys to fit together, an impression undermined upon closer inspection. The impetus for Misfits arose from the setting of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan, where the series debuted last summer in a neoclassical villa overlooking an English garden open to adults only when accompanied by a child—a reversal of the usual situation in a museum, where children without adults would likely encounter resistance. Baghramian placed several marble sculptures outdoors on the terrace; as the terrace was considered part of the garden, her sculptures there were subject to the same rules of visitation, with adults unaccompanied by children unable to access them. Indoors, their counterparts in varnished aluminum resided in the villa’s opulent rooms, its large windows overlooking the garden and the sculptures sited on the terrace. In a second presentation at the Paris branch of the Marian Goodman Gallery, an open installation plan conjured the suggestion of an abandoned playground. Designed by the artist, the Nasher’s presentation combines two of the Paris Misfits with a new work, Misfits P, that includes a sculpture in marble, a material used in the Milan exhibition. Accompanying the sculptures is a photograph from Baghramian’s series Jumbled Alphabet, which replaces the image of a happy child at play in favor of a grumpy, unsmiling girl with disheveled hair. As with the Paris gallery presentation, all visitors are welcome, yet despite their evocation of toys, Baghramian’s sculptures may not be touched, thwarting expectations. Baghramian’s Misfits offer an opportunity to consider the intersection of play and work in relation to our daily lives, the creation of art, and the spaces we dedicate to these activities. Her installation draws attention to the ways that divisions of space can enforce divisions of other kinds, even as they may provide areas of respite. Questioning the uses of play in our society, especially its role in encouraging assimilation and conformity, the Misfits instead propose moments of unbounded play with no intended outcome, with the likelihood that on some occasions this will lead to moments of frustration as well as release. As Baghramian has remarked, “The sculpture should have the chance to not fulfill expectations.” The same might be said of ourselves, whether artists or viewers, children or adults.