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Guilt Machine, 2013

The ear is a recurring motif in the works of Anna Boghiguian, including in the installation-sculpture “Guilt Machine”. An autobiographical component here is the fact that the artist suffered damage to her hearing during her studies in the 1970s. Boghiguian talks about three kinds of ears appearing in her works: a kind of inner ear, with which one perceives things metaphorically, the physical ear, with which one hears the outside world, and the social ear, through which we are able to interact in society. Anna Boghiguian’s title alludes to the Germans’ collective guilt because of crimes committed during the Second World War. The machine can be moved using the bicycle chain mechanism. Like an endless ribbon, the guilt spans the situation; the ear listening into the past and the hand act as an eternal accompaniment and threat. In addition, the machine demonstrates how information itself circulates and moves.

Anna Boghiguian, The Guilt Machine, 2013, mixed media, 210 x 76 x 42 xm, foto: Philipp Ottendörfer
Anna Boghiguian, The Guilt Machine, 2013, mixed media, 210 x 76 x 42 xm, foto: Philipp Ottendörfer

mixed media
210 x 76 x 42 xm

fotos: Philipp Ottendörfer

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Anna Boghiguian

Anna Boghiguian was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1946 and has Armenian roots. She studied political and social science at the American University of Cairo and holds a BFA in fine arts and music from the Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Since the early 1970s, her art has emerged from various movements around the globe, translating a nomadic experience and gaze into painting and installation, collages and books. As a traveling artist, she tells of how people and ideas, relationships and goods vary and evolve, sometimes bright and fluid, sometimes bound in inequality and oppression. Boghiguian's broad insight into literature and worlds of thought makes her art a profound source of contemplation. In 2015 Boghiguian received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale and in 2024 she will be awarded the 30th Wolfgang-Hahn-Prize of the Society for Modern Art at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Her work has been featured in major solo exhibitions around the world, most recently at the Power Plant, Toronto (2023) Kunsthaus Bregenz in Venice (2022), IVAM, Valencia (2021), SMAK, Ghent (2020), Tate St. Ives (2019), the New Museum (2018) and the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2018) and in numerous international group shows including the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020), Castello di Rivoli, Torino (2019), the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (2017) and the dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012).



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