Armin Najib grew up literally staring at the horizon. As a child sailing with his father, a Merchant Marine captain, he would fix his gaze on that thin line between sky and ocean until the world went flat and gravity stopped making sense.

But the sea wasn't just open water and infinite sky — it was also valves, cranes, pipes, engines, and the constant groan of metal under pressure. Najib spent his childhood inside one of the most industrial environments imaginable, and that left just as deep a mark as the horizon did. Later, when he studied mechanical engineering, the language of steel, aluminium, joints, and screws only became more fluent.

That early obsession with edges, with the point where one thing ends and another begins, never really left him. Today, Najib is a Dubai-based artist and jeweller whose work moves between sculpture, kinetic art, and wearable objects — all held together by a precise, almost engineering-minded eye for form. Which makes sense: he taught himself metalsmithing from old books, alone in a home workshop, with no YouTube and a lot of trial and error.

This year, he is showing at Art Dubai with Silicium — a new series that asks a question: what would beauty look like if silicon, not carbon, were the basis of all life? We sat down with him to talk about his father, the sea, silicon-based worlds, and why some of his jewelry pieces are almost impossible to wear — and people buy them anyway.

— Armin, of course, we are going to talk about your art today, but first, I am really curious about your dad, who was a ship captain, and about the years you spent with him at sea during your childhood. I would love to hear more about that.

— So, my dad is 74 now. He is retired and lives in northern Iran, surrounded by jungles. Before that, he was a Merchant Marine captain. He spent around 20 to 22 years sailing nonstop.

Sometimes I travelled with him, and as a child, I visited many parts of the world. We travelled on cargo ships and container carrier ships, and this continued until I became a teenager.

Other times, he would be away for long periods. Our family life was a cycle of reconnecting and separating again. Back then, there was no internet or email, so communication was limited to occasional phone calls.

When I was born, he was in Argentina. My mother told him over the phone that I had been born, and she held the phone near me while I was crying. He recorded my voice on a cassette tape, and I think he still has it. By the time he returned home, I was already three months old.

I am really proud of my father. He is a man of honour and dignity. He served his country and spent his whole life working through difficult times, wars, and long years at sea. He is very patriotic, but also incredibly humble and honest.

What I admire most about him is his honesty. Even after becoming a captain — wearing the four gold stripes that command respect from everyone — he never cared about status or ego.

Most captains loved showing those stripes. My father refused to wear them whenever he could. Instead, he wore a simple boiler suit, like the workers on the ship. Every day he would walk the deck with his students, teaching them not only how to sail, but how to become better men — how to survive at sea, how to behave, how to be educated and responsible. That is why everyone remembers him.

— What do you remember from those trips? Are there any memories that still stand out?

— I remember the endless horizon, where the sky and the ocean became one line. It felt like pure infinity.

Sailors talked about a strange effect that could happen if you stared at the horizon for too long. After several minutes, it felt almost hypnotic. Gravity seemed to disappear, the world felt flat, and it could even make you nauseous. Sailors tried to avoid looking at it for too long because of that feeling. And I used to do it all the time!

I also still remember one beautiful thing: the race between the ship and the dolphins. In the middle of the ocean, when dolphins notice a moving ship, they come right alongside it and start racing. They race with you for twenty or thirty minutes. When you look at them, you can feel their excitement and their joy for life. It feels as if they are trying to say hello — as if they want you to notice them and share that moment with them.

But the sea could also become terrifying. I remember the Tropical Revolving Storms in the middle of the ocean. When a storm hit, it hit violently. For three or four days nonstop, the ship would rise and crash back down again. You could hear the metal groaning and shaking. Many people on board became severely seasick. Some couldn’t breathe properly, some were vomiting constantly, and nobody could sleep because the ship kept rolling without stopping.

I still remember how the sea changed during those storms. At night, the ocean stopped being blue and turned black and purple. The sky became completely dark. Sometimes, for two or three days, there was no sunlight at all. It felt like being trapped inside pure chaos.

And in those moments, you realise how powerless you are. Nature makes it very clear that you are nothing compared to it. Sometimes the electricity would fail, and you truly felt that the sea could kill you. It was beautiful, but also incredibly dangerous.

One storm was so intense that afterwards there was even a crack somewhere in the ship. After that experience, my father decided he was done with sailing.

— And did you ever think about becoming a captain?

— Actually, I have. I wanted to follow my father’s path, but he didn’t let me. He told me, ‘I had a family, but I was never really there. Even when you were born, I was away.’ He didn’t want me to live that kind of life.

I even took all the entrance and physical exams for maritime studies and passed everything. But after I passed, he sat me down and said, ‘I know this is your passion, and it is probably in your genes, but please listen to me. Don’t do this.’

— I read that your childhood and those experiences at sea taught you to explore and experiment. I was wondering how such a profound part of your life influenced your artistic practice — especially the materials you use and the kinds of works you create today.

— The ship itself was an extremely industrial environment. I grew up surrounded by valves, pipes, engines, cranes, steel structures, and machinery, and all of that deeply influenced my visual language.

At the same time, life at sea gave me a very particular sense of silence and space. There was no city noise, no traffic — only the ocean, the sky, and endless time to think. You also grow up constantly moving between countries and cultures, living with people from all over the world on the same ship. That changes your understanding of borders and identity.

Later, I studied mechanical engineering, specifically solid design, which brought me even closer to industrial materials and structures — steel, aluminium, joints, screws, springs, mechanics. So both my childhood and my education became part of my artistic vocabulary.

That is also where my obsession with geometry comes from, especially the cube. Nature is mostly organic and round, but human civilisation is geometric. We live inside cubes and rectangles — architecture, screens, tables, buildings. For me, the cube became a symbol of the human world.

But there was also another feeling that stayed with me from the sea: the horizon. I remember staring at that thin line between the sky and the ocean until everything felt infinite and almost hypnotic. In those moments, you realise how small you are. That feeling still exists in my work today.

And I think all of these experiences — industry, engineering, geometry, silence, and the search for freedom — eventually became the foundation of my artistic language.

— Is there a recurring idea or theme that you find yourself constantly chasing through your work?

— I think it is freedom. Not freedom in a physical sense, but freedom of thought — the ability to stay open-minded and not judge others.

For me, freedom is not something you achieve once and keep forever. It is a continuous process. You grow, educate yourself, remove one limitation, and then realise there is another boundary in front of you. You break that one, too, and again, freedom moves further away. It is something you constantly chase.

I think that search exists in both my life and my work.

Part of it probably comes from my childhood — constantly moving between countries, cultures, and people. Growing up at sea changed the way I see borders and identity. It made me feel that human beings are much more connected than we think.

But it also came from personal experience. For many years, my relationship with my father was difficult because we were emotionally disconnected. Every time he returned from the sea, I had already become a different person. We spent years trying to understand each other again. Today we are very close, but that process taught me a lot about individuality, distance, and emotional freedom.

Later, when I had my studio in Tehran, I tried to create a space built around that same idea. People from completely different backgrounds could come together there — religious people, agnostics, artists, engineers, intellectuals, rebellious personalities — and nobody judged anyone.

One of my students once told me, “The best thing about your studio is that nobody judges anyone here.”

That meant a lot to me, because that openness was the real purpose of the space. There were no rigid rules or restrictions. People could work, talk, listen to music, drink coffee, stay all night if they wanted to. The door was always open.

What I wanted was simple: a place where people could honestly express themselves without fear, without borders, and without pretending to be someone else.

— You are completely self-taught, right? Was it difficult to be taken seriously by people?

— Oh yes, it was because I never went to art school or craft school. I studied mechanical engineering, so I often felt like an outsider entering the art world.

At that time, my cousin and I owned a café inside a villa that also housed one of the best galleries in Tehran. Many artists came there every day, and one day I overheard a workshop about contemporary jewelry. Something immediately connected with me, and I became obsessed with the subject.

I started spending time in a jewelry studio, mostly observing and doing small tasks, but eventually I realised I needed to teach myself properly. I slowly bought tools and equipment, built a small workshop at home, and started learning alone.

There was no YouTube back then, so I learned through old books on metalsmithing, silversmithing, and jewelry-making. I treated them almost like scientific manuals — studying techniques, materials, chemistry, tools, and then experimenting by myself through trial and error.

That is why self-doubt was always part of my process. Everything I learned came from curiosity and making mistakes on my own.

— Was there anyone who inspired or helped you along the way?

— Yes. One day, a friend told me that his uncle, an artist, had passed away, and the family didn’t know what to do with his studio. When I entered the apartment, I was shocked. The entire place was overflowing with books, sculptures, jewelry, tools, sketches, and collections from all over the world. It felt like entering the mind of a hermit artist.

He had studied in Canada and England before returning to Iran. He was a sculptor and jewelry artist, deeply talented but very isolated from the public.

The moment I saw his work, I started crying. I immediately felt that this was the mentor I had been searching for my entire life, but I had arrived too late.

The family allowed me to spend time in the studio studying his books, notes, sketches, and tools, and eventually they even let me keep some of them. I spent months learning from everything he had left behind. Through his tools and notes, I discovered techniques and possibilities I had never known existed. In a way, he became my mentor after his death.

Later, some of his former students contacted me because they were upset that a stranger had taken things from the studio. I invited them to my own studio, placed everything in front of them, and told them: “If any of these objects mean something to you, please take them.”

We ended up talking for hours, and one of them told me something I will never forget: “If he were alive today, he would have been proud of what you are creating.”

That moment changed something inside me. Even though we never met, he became my teacher. I am self-taught, but he was my mentor.

— Wow. So, you are preparing a new series of works for Art Dubai called Silicium. Tell me more about it, please.

— The idea behind this body of work actually started many years ago, when I was very young and constantly attending gallery talks and artist lectures to educate myself. I remember one sculptor speaking about materiality — about why artists choose specific materials for their work.

He explained that an artist doesn’t choose bronze instead of aluminium simply because of colour or appearance. The material itself carries meaning. There is a dialogue between the artist and the metal. The alloy responds to the artist, and the artist responds to the nature of the material.

That idea stayed with me for years.

After that lecture, I started looking at artworks differently, especially in museums in Tehran. I kept asking myself: why did this artist choose this material and not another one? What is the material itself trying to say?

Then one day, another thought appeared in my mind. We live in a carbon-based world. Carbon is fundamental to life itself. In chemistry, carbon has four bonds, and because of that, it becomes the foundation of countless structures in nature and biology.

Silicon — or silicium — is actually very similar. It also has four bonds. In some ways, silicon and carbon are like sisters in the periodic table. But silicon behaves differently. It is less reactive, more mineral, more crystalline.

And I started asking myself: what if we replaced carbon with silicon? What if one day we woke up in a silicon-based world instead of a carbon-based one? What would happen to beauty? What would happen to nature, to trees, to human perception, to architecture, to our understanding of harmony and aesthetics?

If the foundations of life were different, would our definition of beauty also change?

That question became the foundation of the Silicium series.

The works explore a world where silicon replaces carbon — a world that is more mineral, crystalline, industrial, and synthetic. It is almost like imagining an alternative evolution of life and aesthetics.

And because silicon is strongly connected to glass, technology, semiconductors, and artificial systems, the series also asks deeper questions about humanity’s future — about where we are heading as a civilisation, and whether our relationship with nature is slowly transforming into something else entirely.

— And at the same time as Art Dubai, you also have a solo exhibition coming up, RE-FLEKT!

— Yes. In 2024, I had a solo exhibition with Aisha Alabbar Gallery called -continuum.

The exhibition brought together three or four different series of my work. At the centre was the Perfect Cubes series, which was actually one of the first times I created work with a strong political dimension. Around it were other bodies of work — more experimental, kinetic, and interactive pieces.

I called the exhibition -continuum because all of these series were connected to one another. They reflected where I came from artistically, what I was exploring in the present, and where I wanted to go in the future. It felt like one continuous thread.

RE-FLEKT comes from a similar idea, but in the context of jewelry.

After this exhibition, we are launching RE-FLEKT as a brand.

The name RE-FLEKT is important to me because I believe jewelry creates a very unique relationship between the artwork and the person wearing it.

When someone encounters a sculpture in a gallery, they remain a viewer. But jewelry changes that relationship completely. The viewer also becomes the user. The artwork enters their body, their personality, and their daily life.

And I truly believe objects can influence people emotionally over time.

Some of my jewelry pieces are not even fully wearable in a practical sense. People still collect them because they connect to them emotionally or intellectually. So the question becomes: why would someone buy a piece of jewelry they cannot even comfortably wear? Because it becomes more than an accessory. It becomes an object of reflection. That is why I chose this name.