“The gift of being alive is developing a garden in oneself,” the Armenian-Egyptian artist told Hyperallergic, “and to move towards heaven.”
YEREVAN, Armenia — After half a century of traveling around the world, Armenian-Egyptian artist Anna Boghiguian brings her art to Yerevan, at the National Gallery of Armenia. Weaving Culture is a natural history of Armenia illustrated in carpet, with the occasional irruption of people or supernatural beings. Suns, stars, flowers, and animals populate the works, much like the motifs of traditional Armenian rugs.
Yet in traditional rugs, celestial bodies and creatures are encoded in smaller, geometric motifs, and are not always recognizable at first sight. In Boghiguian’s works, they become large and figurative, though often stylized, presences, set against expanses of pastel colors. In the words of curator Nairi Khatchadourian, Boghiguian’s project amounts to the invention of the watercolor carpet.
Anna Boghiguian: Weaving Culture tells its story in 37 rugs and three drawings, divided between three acts in contiguous halls. The first lays out the mountains of Armenia — massive, their tall peaks often tightly pressed against each other in a confusion of blues, browns, and purples. A huge red sun with yellow rays presides over a landscape bound by two red and grayish peaks separated by what looks like a valley.
The second act is the garden. Trees and plants with large, blooming, blood-red flowers dominate here. A human figure appears in “Man with Pomegranate and Snake” (all works 2025–26). Storks are as ubiquitous in these works as they are in Armenia. The large tapestry “The Sound of Nature is Music” portrays clearly discernible trees, mountains, and flowers, yet its sinuous lines and the jumble of colors and undulating shapes may carry a faint echo of Arshile Gorky’s landscapes.
What follows this earthly Eden are ancient trees, alchemists, and angels in conversation with birds. Instead of expulsion from paradise, we find “Angel Transforms into Bird and Vice Versa” and the monumental “Trees have a Memory,” with improbable colors that nevertheless feel true to the Armenian landscape. Indeed, one of the unintended technical by-products of Weaving Culture was the devising of a process for creating new natural dyes for wool, which resulted in the production of more than 200 shades.
The carpets were created by six displaced Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian weavers, who translated Boghiguian’s drawings into woven art. The exhibition also features a series of photographs by Piruza Khalapyan, a film from the artist’s residency produced by AHA collective, accompanying testimonials by the women weavers, as well as materials from the weaving and dyeing processes.
The story told by Boghiguian has been described as an epic. “Meghri, the Earth Rises,” a large carpet that depicts a crouching woman figure with a crested head, grasping what looks like a chunk of earth with a budding plant on it, would justify the label. Yet alongside the rest of the exhibition, the sequence feels like a convincingly secular, pictorial retelling of the Book of Genesis, one that replaces expulsion with ascent.
I spoke to Boghiguian first by phone and later by text message. The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Left: detail of a work in Anna Boghiguian: Weaving Culture (photo © Daniil Primak); right: installation view of Anna Boghiguian: Weaving Culture (photo Daniil Primak)
Hyperallergic: Tell me when and how you saw Armenia first and how that changed over time.
Anna Boghiguian: Before visiting, as a child, I saw Armenia as a pink stone without construction. I flew there for the first time in the mid-’90s. It still had the marks of Soviet times in its ways of being. It is difficult to change a mind or mentality overnight. It takes time, and it is a journey in itself, as the baggage Armenia and Armenians carry is massive. Its history is vast and tragic.
Yerevan, Sevan, and Kirovakan [present-day Vanadzor] are the cities I visited, and repeatedly I saw the marks of human tragedy — the need for a better existence. There was no water, no electricity, no fuel for heating or fans to cool off in the summer — a stagnant economic situation that perseverance and a strong national will could move forward.
I visited the national historical museum as well as the national gallery. I don’t think there was an exhibition. I did not imagine that one day I would exhibit in Yerevan. I was in my late 40s and did not have the ambition or possibility to undertake large projects.
However, I was impressed by the museum in general, and its laid-back attitude. My drawings transition from wool to sheep to herds moving forward, like Armenia has moved forward since the mid-’90s.
H: Is this the first time you have employed wool as the primary medium of your art?
AB: Yes, it’s the first time. I had one experience a long time ago, but this is the first time it appears in so many pieces. I think the project has many facets. It relates to Artsakh [also known as Nagorno-Karabakh], it relates to Armenia in its use of wool and carpeting.
H: You have created a new language that reimagines centuries of Armenian carpet-weaving tradition. You have broken down traditional geometry, themes, and even its processes to create a new language. Tell me how you conceived both its themes and its visual language.
AB: It is the weavers of Artsakh who have undertaken the task of weaving my drawings into carpets. They went out of their traditional way of thinking, and they managed to go beyond their barriers. They are the ones who managed to revolutionize the carpets. Not me. They managed to translate my works into carpets. They were very open to undertaking the project, so it’s not me but the weavers who agreed to adopt another process and take it to another level. They could have refused.
H: One of the most fascinating aspects of the creative process was the search for and creation of new colors. That, too, has a long tradition, most notably in the Armenian cochineal — the red dye obtained from beetles native to Armenia — which was prized by miniaturists in medieval Europe. Can you tell me about your exploration and creation of color for this work?
AB: I tried to create a simpler line and palette than usual. Armenia has a rich history in the use of cochineal red. There is a church in Ani that is a fine example of the Armenian red and the refinement of line and color. The only thing I did is that I tried to make my drawings less complicated than normal because of the weaving process.
H: What was it like working with displaced Armenian women from Artsakh?
AB: I’m not very acquainted with Armenian culture. I’ve been there two or three times, for a few days. But being Armenian probably runs in your blood. My work is globally Armenian, like the Armenians from Artsakh — they are Armenians and part of Armenia. They have kept their tradition of weaving alive.
H: Do you recognize any elements of your Egyptian background in these works?
Well, it’s different. Cairo is different. I lived also for a long time in Canada. And I travel quite a bit in Asia. So it all comes together, you know. Culture is something that is all different ways of life; all different cultures meet, and that becomes the essence of everything. We cannot separate this from that, because at the end, culture comes and unites us together.
H: I felt I saw elements of Martiros Saryan, perhaps particularly from his early period, in the motifs of Weaving Culture? Would you acknowledge the influence of any Armenian artists?
AB: I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s a great compliment to compare me with Saryan, who is considered the most important Armenian painter. I admired Hagop Hagopian as a child. I loved his garlic paintings, but I doubt I have his inspiration or attitude. It is too much of a compliment to get near Saryan, as he is the greatest.
H: The exhibition progresses from the landscape to the garden and then to a metaphysical realm. What struck me was that the transition is from the garden to a heavenly abode, rather than to the expulsion from Eden. Can you elaborate on that choice?
AB: I didn’t take it as a heaven, but I thought it was a conversation of the soul. And of course, the garden. We all have a garden in ourselves. It’s the inner world of everybody. Either your garden is lush and prosperous, or your garden is dying and dead. So, it all depends on what you do with yourself. I don’t see an expulsion from Eden. The gift of being alive is developing a garden in oneself, to see nature as part of all, and to move towards heaven or towards conversation of the self with itself or the cosmos. We develop our history from the earth, or I did. Humanity is believed to have been expelled from Eden, and that is how Armenians live. I hope we recover.
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