Anna Boghiguian (b.1946, EG/AR) conveys her observations of the various societies she has lived in through painting, colour, line and form. She was born in Egypt during the monarchy and witnessed firsthand the different stages the country went through: historic socio–political changes as well as the cultural shift away from cosmopolitanism in a state seeking to consolidate its identity. After studying at an Armenian school and an American college, Boghiguian has travelled continuously since the 1970s: she moved to the Mediterranean coast, then across the Aegean Sea; she crossed the Atlantic and settled in Montréal for a long time, then left again for Mexico, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.
Anna Boghiguian, Untitled 1, 2, 3, 2019
Cutting and mixed media on paper and wooden
base and metal
Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo/New York/Brussels
Anna Boghiguian, Conversations with Clarice, 2019
Cutting and mixed media on paper and wooden
base and metal
Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo/New York/Brussels
Anna Boghiguian, To the Lighthouse, 2019
Acrylic on metal pieces
Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM,
São Paulo/New York/Brussels
In the chapel of the Vieille Charité, Armenian-Egyptian-Canadian artist Anna Boghiguian envisions a conversation between Clarice Lispector and Virginia Woolf – two writers who explored pictorial art within the semantic limits of literature. Boghiguian’s installation to one side of the chapel brings together some of the possibilities present in Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H., especially the scene in which the cockroach comes out of the closet and has more to teach us about the limitations of our perception than any other being in the world.
On another side of the Chapel, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse assembles random moments and figures, telling a story about existence and co-existence. Over the course of the novel, the young painter Lily Briscoe grows from selfdoubt to understanding, while her thoughts left unsaid illuminate many of the tensions driving the novel.
* Work conceived for the occasion of Manifesta 13 Marseille
