Anna Boghiguian

With Anna Boghiguian, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg continues its series of acclaimed debut presentations by eminent women artists. In addition, like earlier exhibitions, the show initiates a dialogue between cultures and introduces visitors to perspectives that transcend conventional Western and often Eurocentric points of view. A monumental installation the artist has designed for the Rupertinum’s atrium as part of our project series will be unveiled in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition and remain on view for a full year.

The Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s survey of the oeuvre of Anna Boghiguian (1946 Cairo, EG)—her first institutional exhibition in the German-speaking world—showcases numerous expansive key works by the artist as well as a spectacular new installation in the Rupertinum’s atrium. In her drawings, collages, artist’s books, and installations, Boghiguian creates narrative spaces that let her probe the sustained impact of historic political and economic conditions on the contemporary world. By tracing the emergence of ancient channels of commerce such as the routes of the salt trade, she teases out lasting effects of colonialism and slavery. The impulses that animate the artist’s work, which is informed by expressionist and representational visual idioms, derive from her study of human existence in a globalized world. Boghiguian is an attentive observer and has traveled and still is travelling widely; her art reflects her familiarity with a cosmopolitan culture enriched by ongoing exchange. Many of her works make reference to the southeastern Mediterranean region—an area that seems to be in perpetual commotion. “Anna Boghiguian’s art is a vital contribution to a critical engagement with modernity, an undertaking that has been central to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s programming under my direction. In exhibitions such as Art/Histories (2014) and Anti:modern (2016), we already shed light on modernity’s darker sides, on the conditions that underlay it and its repercussions, with works by artists from diverse geographical regions that time and again helped us see things with fresh eyes. The need for such a critical reconsideration of history and its consequences from a present-day perspective is now widely recognized, and Boghiguian’s powerful and singular creative output can guide us in this venture in crucial ways. That is why I am extraordinarily pleased that we host her first solo exhibition in Austria with a prominent selection of works,” Sabine Breitwieser, Director of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, and curator of the exhibition, remarks.

The Egyptian-Canadian artist Anna Boghiguian was born as the daughter of an ethnic Armenian clock maker. She enrolled at the American University in Cairo in the 1960s, studying political science and art. In the early 1970s, she moved to Canada, where she continued her education in art and music at Concordia University, Montreal. Boghiguian’s art first garnered major international attention in 2012, when it was showcased at documenta 13, Kassel; in 2015 she participated in the exhibition of the Armenian pavilion at the 56th Biennale di Venezia that was awarded the Golden Lion. The exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg includes spectacular works such as The Salt Traders (2015), a sprawling installation comprising sails, collages, salt stones, and sand, which she created for the 15th Istanbul Biennale (2015). The installation A Play to Play (2013) reflects Boghiguian’s sustained interest in literature, poetry, and philosophy, with a particular focus on the Indian artist and Nobel laureate in literature Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Also on display is Promenade dans l’inconscient (A Walk in the Unconscious, 2016), a procession of paper silhouette figures in which the artist intertwines the circumstances of the founding of Nîmes, France, as a colony of the Roman Empire with references to the art of Max Beckmann and his critique of the Weimar Republic. Additional highlights are the artist’s books she has created since the 1980s and her most recent series of collages An Incident in the Life of a Philosopher (2017), a meditation on an episode in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche set in Turin.

Curator: Sabine Breitwieser, Director, with Marijana Schneider, Curatorial Assistant, Museum der Moderne Salzburg

The exhibition is a rearranged adaptation of a presentation organized by the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli near Turin, curators Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Mariana Vecellio, in cooperation with the Museum der Moderne Salzburg.