Anna Boghiguian’s Monumental ‘Chess Game’ Installation Is on View in Toronto
Anna Boghiguian is a Canadian-Egyptian artist whose work investigates cultural ideas and social upheavals spurred by tyrannical regimes. Born in Cairo in 1946, Boghiguian lives a nomadic life, traveling across the Americas, Europe, and Africa to understand the parallels between different socio-political figures and the impact they have had on the larger throes of culture. She was recently the recipient of one of the world’s biggest art honors, the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, a €100,000 EUR award by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig.
Her monumental installation The Chess Game (2022-2023) is taking center stage again, this time in a new exhibition, entitled Time of Change, at Toronto’s The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Instead of the usual pawns and knights, Boghiguian replaces the chess pieces with cutouts of historical figures from similar and opposing schools of thought, who quarrel for power. Interestingly, many of the characters depicted are of Austrian origin, such as France’s Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette and her mother, Maria Theresia; Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, who was assassinated in 1914 — sparking the first World War, along with Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist who is hailed as the father of psychoanalysis.
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Painted with expressive detail on paper, the artworks are blown up to scale as life-size chess pieces that map out the rise and fall of empires and the role in which each figure played in shaping the world. The Chess Game (2022-2023) first went on view at the KUB in Venice in 2022, and again at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria in fall of the same year. Time of Change will also include rare drawings and books chronicling Boghiguian’s artistic process and nomadic lifestyle.
“With the global rise of dictatorial regimes and conservative governments that infringe upon freedom, Boghiguian’s works bring to light the issue of historical amnesia, and the shared efforts needed to unseat power,” wrote a release by the gallery. The exhibition will be on view in Toronto until January 7, 2024.
Across the pond, Gabriel Moses announces the release of his first monograph.
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
231 Queens Quay W
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8, Canada
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