Time of Change is a compilation of over a hundred drawings, some of which show Heim’s residence in Cairo. (Aribert Heim is a figure of key importance for Boghiguian. Heim — of Austrian origin — was the camp physician at the Mauthausen concentration camp and known among the prisoners as “Dr. Death”. After the war, he spent several years in Germany before fleeing to Egypt, where he lived undisturbed in a hotel in Cairo until his death.) A number of the drawings were created on a research trip in Berlin, where Heim owned an apartment building, others while the artist made a visit to France. At Versailles, Boghiguian drew the signing of the peace treaty in the palace’s Hall of Mirrors, which ended World War I, as well as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose books inspired Marie Antoinette. The drawings also include images of a guillotine, scenes from the Haitian Revolution, and the back of the Statue of Liberty. The figures crowding the images are drawn in a caricature-like manner and unfailingly rendered with expressive lines. The color scheme in the works alternates between pale opaque white and luminous color. Boghiguian’s painting technique recalls that of Honoré Daumier or the expressive gestures of James Ensor. Many of her sheets show the contrast between political leaders and the people at their mercy. Next to a caricature of Aribert Heim, whose rows of teeth Boghiguian painted double, appears an impressive triple portrait against an empty background: Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky in dirty black and gray.
Time of Change, 2022
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).
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony