The first solo exhibition of Armenian-Egyptian-Canadian artist Anna Boghiguian opened on May 15, 2026, at the National Gallery of Armenia.
The exhibition follows the “Weaving Culture” residency program conceived by the curatorial practice AHA collective, which welcomed Anna Boghiguian to Armenia for a one-month residency in July 2025, with the support of the EU Delegation in Armenia.
Born in Cairo in 1946, Anna Boghiguian has turned her work into a cartography of the world, in the spirit of the great travelers of the Middle Ages. Over the course of half a century, the artist has traveled across the four continents, weaving connections between micro-histories and the ways in which material cultures are informed by constantly shifting human geographies, while always drawing on mythologies that inhabit our imaginaries. Her practice is grounded in intensive research, drawing from literature, digital media, and fieldwork in each place she temporarily inhabits, which she translates into expressive drawings, paper cut-outs, artist’s books, and large-scale installations. Following her explorations of the histories of salt, silk, and cotton, she has turned to the art of carpet and the weaving culture in Armenia.
After her one-month residency with AHA collective, during which she visited carpet workshops, met with displaced women weavers from Nagorno-Karabagh, and traveled through southern Armenia to the border city of Meghri, a paper to carpet translation process was initiated. Over the course of nine months, the displaced weavers, together with local dyers, translated 37 drawings created during the diasporic artist’s residency into a rich textile language, using local wool and more than two hundred dyes. Bringing together displaced women weavers, including those formerly part of the renowned Artsakh Carpet workshop, the project has supported them in re-establishing their practice in Yerevan and in workshops across nearby villages. “It is a great opportunity to read what the weavers share about their lives and their experiences, their reactions to my work, and their experiences while weaving, especially in terms of color”, shares the artist.
Curated by Nairi Khatchadourian, Anna Boghiguian’s Weaving Culture emerges as a contemporary epic in which the carpet becomes the narrative voice,
speaking from both Armenia’s pastoral and mythological past and its present geopolitical condition, marked by wars, displacement, and ongoing threats at
its borders. Armenian carpets have been celebrated for centuries across the Silk Road and Eurasia, in palaces and places of worship, as well as in domestic
interiors and Renaissance still lifes. Through Weaving Culture, Boghiguian honors the know-how passed down through generations by Armenians, turning the carpet into an ecology of care and dialogue across geographies and generations. “Carried by carpets woven by women who have lost their homeland, the artist-bard’s contemporary epic uplifts the weavers’ feeling of uprootedness toward a form of transcendence,” shares curator Nairi Khatchadourian.
Spanning four gallery spaces, the exhibition features three original drawings by Anna Boghiguian, 37 carpets and tapestries, a series of photographs by Piruza
Khalapyan, a film from the artist’s residency produced by AHA collective, accompanying testimonials by the women weavers, materials from the weaving and
dyeing processes, and Louisiana Channel’s recent interview with the artist.
Press release from AHA Collective
Image: Anna Boghiguian. Weaving Culture. Image courtesy of Piruza Khalapyan (AHA collective)
