The Douglas Hyde is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Ireland by renowned artist Anna Boghiguian, titled Period of Change. Widely considered one of the most interesting contemporary artists of our time, Boghiguian is a close observer of the human condition, proposing a unique and diverse interpretation of contemporary life. She draws equally on the past and present, poetry and politics, joyfulness coexisting with anger at the injustice in the world.
Boghiguian has travelled all of her life. The daughter of an Armenian clockmaker, she studied political science and art in Cairo, Egypt, in the 1960s and arts and music in Montreal, Canada, in the early 1970s. Keeping a studio and home in Cairo, Boghiguian travels extensively, bringing direct knowledge of world cultures and politics into her work. She creates polyphonic narratives that unfold in drawings, paintings, collages, dioramas, installations, and books. For Anna, writing and drawing fit together, both are lines.
Period of Change brings together three major works spanning Gallery 1 & 2 of The Douglas Hyde this summer. Taking the French Revolution’s heralding of democracy for all people, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” as a starting point, the exhibition explores change both past and present through overlapping histories of political ideologies and societal transformation.
At the centre of the exhibition is The Chess Game (2022-2023). Conceived as a world stage, it is an oversized chess board with cut-outs of historical figures from opposing and correlating schools of thought who quarrel for power. Almost all are Austrian in origin; from Gavrilo Princip, who killed Franz Ferdinand, initiating World War I, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and dancer, singer, actress and double agent Josephine Baker. For Anna, The Chess Game deals with strategy but also “with music, with poetry and with the development of thought.”1
Elsewhere in the gallery a hanging mobile, The Uprising (2022), features likenesses of contemporary inventors and intellectuals whose ideas have transformed society. Cut-outs depict Gandhi, Bill Gates, Martin Luther King, the inventor of the cellphone, Martin Cooper; all people who have tried to instigate revolution and change. In Gallery 2 a script by the artist is brought to life through a woman’s voice, tracing and interconnecting figures from Marie- Antoinette and Leon Trotsky to the singing of Josephine Baker and Lenin giving a speech.
Period of Change resonates powerfully by reframing events in the history of humanity—from the birth of the French Revolution to the Suez Crisis— revealing similarities with current struggles for liberation, fundamental human rights and equality across the world. With the global rise of dictatorial regimes, conservative and far right governments that infringe upon freedom, and horrifying wars, Boghiguian’s works bring to light the cost of historical amnesia, and the collective efforts needed to unseat power and realise real equality, liberty and brotherhood.
1 Anna Boghiguian in conversation with Thomas D. Trummer.” In Period of Change, edited by Thomas D. Trummer. Cologne, Germany: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, and Verlag der Buchhandlug Walther und Franz König, 2023.
Press release from The Douglas Hyde
Image: Anna Boghiguian. Period of Change at The Douglas Hyde. 2024. Photography by Louis Haugh. Image courtesy of the artist and The Douglas Hyde
