Anna Boghiguian is one of the leading contemporary Egyptian-Canadian artists of Armenian origin. Born in Egypt to an Armenian family, she studied economics and political science in 1969 at the American University in Cairo, while simultaneously taking painting classes with the Egyptian artist Fouad Kamel (1919–1973). When her family emigrated to Montréal, she went on to study at Concordia University, from which she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual arts and music.
It was during this time that she lost her hearing. Since then, the ear has been a recurring motif in her work, appearing in turns in its metaphysical, organic, social, and sensory aspects, such as in the installation of Guilt Machine (2013) or the painting Mapping the Ear (2011–2014). As a travelling artist, she constantly moved to different cities around the world: from Egypt to Canada, from India to France. She studied political science at the American University in Cairo and art and music at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She explores topics related to colonialism, such as the history of the cotton trade and the salt trade.
Her entire production is steeped in literature and filled with words borrowed from personal stories or plays, papers, and mythological or historical tales. “There is a story in them, in that my thought process comes from the narrative form”, says the artist, whose body of work is like a book fragmented in space. This affinity with literature has led her to illustrate many written works, among them poems by Constantin Cavafy, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and Naguib Mahfouz, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Solo and Group Exhibitions
In 2017, she had solo exhibitions at Rivoli Castle and Index-The Swedish Modern Art Foundation, Stockholm, and was nominated for the 8th Artes Mundi Award, which is one of the biggest contemporary art awards in Great Britain.
Her works have been part of several international group exhibitions, including:
Dos de Mayo Center, Madrid 2016
Van Abbe Museum , Eindhoven 2015
Armenian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2015
Istanbul Biennale 2015
New Museum of Modern Art, New York 2014
São Paulo Biennale 2014
Documenta 13, Kassel 2012
Also, her works are in the following collections:
Museum of Modern Art New York | Museum of Modern Art MoMA, New York
Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi
Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of Modern Art in the Castle of Rivoli, Turin
Van Abbe Museum , Eindhoven
In 2023, Boghiguian was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, granted by the Museum Ludwig. Boghiguian was the subject of a solo show at the Power Plant in Toronto, in October 2023.
