Towards a poetics of dispersal: an encounter with Anna Boghiguian.

In the interview with artist Anna Boghiguian, the interviewer attempts to explore the relation the artist holds to the world around her in terms of both her lived experience and her methodology. The introduction by the interviewer as well as the interview delineate the major theoretical concerns present in Boghiguian's work as well as her extensive travels in relation to the work she has produced. Her position in relation to her work is discussed in the context of art history where the opposition between the metaphysical and minimalism is explored. The contemporary moment and the nature of time are placed in relation to the historical work Boghiguian has produced on Constantine Cavafy and the illustrations provided to Tom Lamont's Siwa Door.

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Interviewing Anna Boghiguian is a difficult task. Over the span of a couple of meetings in the Fall of 2000 I recorded several hours of discussion with the artist, which were later on transcribed. However, due to the relaxed nature of oral conversation, a lot of digression occurred; thus it was necessary for me to streamline the text into a consistent and focused dialogue through a process of extensive editing, which was later passed on to her for approval.

In my encounters with Anna Boghiguian I have attempted to uncover the relation she holds to the world around her. The artist's biography, her lived experience, is related to a discussion of the nature and meaning of her work. Rather than claim neutrality in my questions, I propose to present a discursive reading of Boghiguian's work in this introductory note, providing a context for these encounters.

Although Boghiguian's work functions outside constructed critical polarities such as the division between the real and the symbolic or the lyrical and the epic--which is at best a fiction that nurtures the myth that "art" can act as a closed representation--one finds that these fictions can function as analytical tools in the pursuit of an alignment. This is an attempt at exploring the relationship between the enunciator and the enunciation, the position of the subject self, the self that speaks in relation to the discourse it produces. This is an invitation to view the work of an artist as a position; the process, as a relationship between two interdependent and fully valid voices: that of the artist and the world she functions within.

It is my contention that it is necessary to approach the work of Anna Boghiguian with a sensitivity towards the position of the aesthetic in contemporary art practice. It is common practice to view the aesthetic as either the ultimate aim of art--either a moment of transcendence which both justifies the existence of the work and is its essence, or an expression of a moral economy that neutralizes "art" and its relation to the world and thus a site of critique. In the contemporary art world both positions have been fiercely debated; movements and counter-movements have utilized (and theorized) the aesthetic within different contexts. For Boghiguian the aesthetic remains an integral part of the art experience; however, her recognition of the aesthetic is not merely a simple argument for the "transcendent" nature of art. Eschewing the naively beautiful, Anna's work--whether ephemeral paintings or the more brutal, and sculptural drawings--grounds itself upon the creation of a moment. The moment is significant because of its appearance at the nexus of history and lived experience. Personal experience is politicized in a process that transforms as it creates. Whether detailed vistas of city life, or Buddha wax masks, Boghiguian's work is loaded with the significance of the accretion of human culture.

Finding inspiration in both long dead civilizations and the streets of the urban metropolis, i.e. in the moment as defined through cultural production, Boghiguian's work is an attempt at coming to terms with a contemporary world that has redefined the position of art outside the practice of a conscious systematized appropriation of a representation of the cultural invisible, outside the religious. The moment is not merely a representation of aspects of humanity; it is a trace, a mark that imprints itself upon the different mediums that Boghiguian chooses to work with. It is the movement towards a representation that does not limit itself within the borders of mere mimesis that best defines the impetus behind these works. Contrary to the majority of contemporary production, her work is neither purely conceptual nor formal. Although the aesthetic is always present--whether as a strategy or as an end--it is never allowed to dictate the process of the work. It is from this position that we can approach this work not as a silent totalized corpus to be interpreted, but rather as a dynamic discourse in constant engagement with various other discourses. The work is open and thus positions the viewer within an encounter.

Anna Boghiguian's personal travels and experiences visibly inform her work although it is sometimes unclear whether the work is a documentation of the personal, or a comment on the public; the work is always populated with numerous references to a wider context. These might be historical, allegorical or merely documentary. The gaze, because it is personalized, never claims to present the world "as it is." The position of the artist is here more complex than merely that of a "truthful" translator of the world. The relationship is based more on an engagement with, rather than a representation of. Because we are not presented with an epic panoramic view, because details always puncture the silent surface of the painting, we are continuously invited to partake within a specific localized perspective. Truth is not appropriated as much as put into question. This is a position that holds within it a deeply politicized perspective; the refusal to situate the work as an absolute transcendent mystified signifier is in itself an engagement with the material. In Boghiguian's work the transcendent becomes a strategy, a method of grounding the viewer. I suspect that this is a transcendence that functions as a form of access to the very immanence of history: the experience of the human race as expressed in its deeds, in its artifacts, its creations.

The historical is clearly present in the series of travel books that Boghiguian has produced, a series where text and image are brought together to form a larger meta-text. Based upon her travels up various rivers with direct significance to human civilization, these texts directly refer to the passage of time, juxtaposing the traces of dead and dying civilizations with the present moment. The books hold an intertextual relation to older texts, thus acting, in both form and content, as a direct historical comment. Here the work refuses to announce itself as an original creation; the work grounds itself in difference by highlighting the relation it holds to an older, more invisible text.

In Boghiguian's works connected to poetry the invisible is allowed to be present. The image acts as a reservoir of memories, the memories of the words that comprise the poem. In a book on Cavafy (Constantine Cavafy, 1993-97, Poetry Book), or an illustration of Lamont's poetry (Siwa Door, 1998, Poetry Book), Boghiguian transforms the text into a cipher of personal narratives. Whether of the poets' original experiences or of Boghiguian's relationship to the poetry she is working with, the image is a starting point to a series. The subject is not unified. The reader is constantly positioned within a stimulus that has been driven to excess by this movement towards the creation of a parallel universe, one that does not merely interpret an original pure text but rather creates an encounter with the historical materiality of the poem. The relationship with the "original" text is problematized and thus Boghiguian's work refuses to hide its historical materiality. The work is placed in a series by its very nature--an image in a text--and thus demands a grounding upon difference. Reading the cultural text within Boghiguian's subtle interventions within the cultural invisible is to document the moment of repetition: the reflex of culture, the remembering of a name.

Hassan Khan: How did you start painting?

Anna Boghiguian: When I was twelve I took drawing lessons at the Armenian school with an Armenian artist, Onnig Avedissian. I don't think he considered that I had any talent, but I was very interested in drawing and I passed my time drawing the photographs of my parents' wedding. A couple of years later I started studying with an Italian painter, who taught painting to middle-class housewives. When I went to the American University in Cairo I continued drawing in Art History class, while doing painting with Foaud Kamel. After graduation I moved to Canada where a lot of things happened to me. I worked as a social worker on the street and attended an art course at night school where I met Frere Jerome, an automatist, so I started doing automatic painting. Finally I enrolled in Concordia University where I studied painting and music. I composed little piano pieces based on the sounds of cities and did paintings of them. After a few years I went to Mexico, where I did a lot of drawings and photographs of models and strip-tease artists. Since then I have been traveling all over the world.

Hassan Khan: This seems to be a very rich and varied background--partly academic and partly experiential--in which you acquired tools and sensibilities of your art. Were their other formative experiences?

Anna Boghiguian: Well, in Mexico I modeled for a four-month art course given by an extremely interesting teacher. I learned more about drawing in these four months as a model than all my years as an art student.

Hassan Khan: Did acquiring this wealth of experience mean that you stopped traveling?

Anna Boghiguian: No, I traveled back to Cairo, then back to Montreal and then to India where I did lots of drawings. I did a book on India, which I lost with most of my paintings. It was always miraculous that I could travel with no money.

Hassan Khan: How do your travels relate to your work and life?

Anna Boghiguian: Of course my life is basically a lot of traveling, and my travels are part of my life. Even when in cities I always walk a lot, which I think has a strong impact on my work. I made brooches in different parts of the world which were linked to my experiences of the place and then sold them to finance my travel to the next place. Then I ran out of ideas of what to do with these brooches, because you can't keep doing the same thing, so in Mexico I started doing a lot of work on trains and train stations and then continued working on trains in India.

Hassan Khan: What compels you to travel?

Anna Boghiguian: Curiosity, the need to see, the experience of a transformation in the sense of time especially when traveling over land.

Hassan Khan: In all these multi-layered dynamic experiences of travel and movement from one place to the other resulting in art works, what are you doing? Exploring the world or yourself?

Anna Boghiguian: My work relates to a multiplicity of meanings: myself, the symbolic order of the world, the socio-political conditions and the environment I am within. For example the Indian trains were about conflict and non-conflict, about being together and being isolated at the same time.

Hassan Khan: What is your position in relation to what you are working on? What type of gaze do you practice? Do you detach yourself from your surroundings or are you within them?

Anna Boghiguian: I am inside and outside, because I like to work from both positions. I am near the source of my work but am not attached to it.

Hassan Khan: Who are the main influences on your work?

Anna Boghiguian: There are painters I like, but I am not sure you can call them influences, I like metaphysical paintings of Gustave Moreau, I also like Louise Bourgeois, certain Picasso drawings, David Hockney.

Hassan Khan: What about the painter-poet William Blake?

Anna Boghiguian: He's fantastic, you see Gustave Moreau relates better to Blake. He's extraordinary! I think I need many lives to be as extraordinary as he is. Some painters are metaphysical; others like Barnett Newman are more minimalists.

Hassan Khan: What do you mean by metaphysical and minimalist?

Anna Boghiguian: There are paintings that transcend the physical point: when you look at the painting it is not important per se as a body but what is significant is the emotion it evokes and creates. There are other paintings, for example Barnett Newman's "Who's Afraid of Red?" where you react to the red, the value of the work lies in the red, in the way he worked the red. This is the minimalism; it evokes a direct philosophical aspect. When you look at a Blake painting you shouldn't judge it on how well it's put together; it's what the color and the lines evoke that is important--this metaphysical thing that takes you to a celestial reality.

Hassan Khan: In a sense the painting is a magical or holy object.

Anna Boghiguian: It goes beyond, if a person has deep ascetic feelings and does a painting in a deeply disciplined manner then the work is very beautiful and it provokes a religious feeling. But if the person is a great master both metaphysics and the beautiful will coexist, which you can only achieve if you are a very talented person.

Hassan Khan: In the past art had an identified space within culture, art was codified and people had a prescribed relation to art; it is different now.

Anna Boghiguian: Yes, it had a religious nature; this changed after the Renaissance. It used to be the masters and the palaces; now it is the masters and the palaces of the bourgeoisie who are the patrons of the arts.

Hassan Khan: Is there a place for metaphysical painting in today's culture?

Anna Boghiguian: No. The world cannot absorb this now. I think you cannot find artists like William Blake anymore. In the period we are living in people relate to video art and computer art. You can produce videos that are very philosophical, but I haven't seen them.

Hassan Khan: Yes but the meaning of art, its space in the world has changed ...

Anna Boghiguian: True. I have seen paintings of the Madonna in the 1980s but that's a different thing. The world has forgotten the symbolic aspect of these images; people have forgotten the world and how to be in touch with the earth. The relationship of man to the universe is totally different now. Now you switch on a button and you have light, you can fly anywhere, while at the same time there are places on earth where people still dig for water with their hands. There are huge differences. No one can now paint like Leonardo Da Vinci.

Hassan Khan: Maybe it is not necessary anymore.

Anna Boghignian: It is not necessary to paint like a Renaissance artist. But I think the world needs good paintings.

Hassan Khan: Why?

Anna Boghiguian: First, a good painting keeps you in touch with the human factor rather than the mechanical factor. Second, it transcends. Paint, the material itself--the texture, the color--is part of human consciousness, it takes you and transcends beyond the moment. You can have a video that does that too but the images move very quickly, you have to absorb many images, while in a painting it is static, one image. The eye therefore becomes analytical, it perceives a visual phenomenon that the camera can never capture. It is necessary when painting for poetry to find a point of return between the text and the image.

Hassan Khan: Do you see your paintings related to music?

Anna Boghiguian: I see a lot of lyricism and poetry in my work; my work is lyrical rather than epic. The fact that I had fantastic music teachers and that I had a lot of friends who are musicians probably has something to do with it. The intervals in music are like a drawn line.

Hassan Khan: How does this relate to painting?

Anna Boghiguian: Color--music is texture; it is color.

Hassan Khan: Does your work relate to other art forms?

Anna Boghiguian: Writing. I think my work relates to books and poetry. In the past, paintings were done on books and scrolls and walls, the text was united with the painting. Paintings weren't objectified and hung on walls.

Hassan Khan: Could one argue that it is unnecessary to illustrate poetry as the words fulfill the function of a meditative point?

Anna Boghiguian: The painting enriches the text and allows for a new re-reading that is beyond language. It offers a parallel world which reflects the artists' perceptions of the poets' intentions. It creates a new lyricism that is more than the sum of its parts.

Hassan Khan: Is it possible to draw a relationship between the way a poet organizes the words of a poem and the way an artist organizes his/her exhibit?

Anna Boghiguian: No, I believe that these are two different mediums. The painting is more of a complete image than the word in itself. In a sense the painting does not necessarily need the other paintings as much as the words in a poem do.

Hassan Khan: In some of your paintings of Cairo like "Scissors" or your 1995 artist book, images of scissors are superimposed on top of images of the people in the street--you are mixing a representational image with ...

Anna Boghiguian: Yes, with the symbolic. It is about terrorism, about crucifixion, it's about the people's tortures. I don't think of painting static solid images: my images are always dynamic. Lots of motion.

Hassan Khan: What about your approach when working with Cavafy?

Anna Boghiguian: It took me a long time. I did drawings and read for many years. My first illustrations of Cavafy's poetry was in 1980. However, I think now the work is clearer, now it works more with the period through association. There are cultures that have metamorphosed themselves and have either become grossly decadent or morally acceptable. What's interesting is that Cavafy focused on a very decadent period; he lived in Alexandria during a very decadent period, and he chose the Greco-Roman period.

Hassan Khan: And why this fascination with decadence?

Anna Boghiguian: Because it doesn't have the idealistic attitudes of religious dogmas.

Hassan Khan: Why Alexandria? What is your relationship to this city?

Anna Boghiguian: It has an interesting history: the Greco-Romans and their decadence is an instance. It also relates to many things: to the portraits of Fayyoum, to the melting point of wax; it relates to the desert as well as vegetation. It is barren and fertile, it relates to the Zodiac, it relates to Julius Caesar and Rome, it takes you back to its founding, Macedonia, Alexander the Great, it takes you to Greece and Turkey, it covers a wide spectrum; it is not localized. The Fayyoum portraits take you forward to the Renaissance which ultimately take you to Modernism.

Hassan Khan: So it is a starting point to ...

Anna Boghiguian: Yes, a starting point for many moments in history, both future and past.

Hassan Khan: How did you start working on Cavafy?

Anna Boghiguian: I went to his house in Alexandria; it is the space that surrounded him--the very walls he lived within--and through that I detected traces of the man and his work. In a sense, in my work on Cavafy's poetry I have collapsed time. He speaks of the Greco-Roman period and my paintings do not necessarily represent that as much as stand parallel to his world. When I first started on Cavafy I had a more impressionistic approach. My colors were used as an impression of the dynamics of the poem, while later on I started using more concrete images that related to his world. The artist does not have to do exactly what the poet has to do; you can go parallel to what the poet does.

Hassan Khan: But why Cavafy?

Anna Boghiguian: Cavafy dealt with, and translated, the Homeric into a lyrical form that dealt with a decadent period of Alexandria's history, the Greco-Roman period.

Hassan Khan: Isn't there a contradiction here between the beautiful as the transcendent and the beautiful as the physically ideal?

Anna Boghiguian: Not really. The physically ideal is not the measure anymore with what Blake or Picasso did, for example. It is the totality of the image that counts now. In decadence the ideal moral model disappears. Things become more physical, immediate and direct; it is a return to the body.

Hassan Khan: Doesn't this contradict what you earlier said? How can the transcendent metaphysical painting act as a return to the body?

Anna Boghiguian: No, not at all. The painting expresses the body in a transcendent manner. For the viewer the very physicality of the paint--its texture, the layers and the colors--work as a starting point. The painting itself disappears; its value lies in the relation it holds to the eye of the viewer. This is both transcendent and physical.

Hassan Khan: Is this different from your other work with poetry, for example Tom Lamont's Siwa Door?

Anna Boghiguian: The way Tom has written the poem, the way he has observed the door, is the way a draughtsman observes a door. He pulled out images from the door which he related to the Mediterranean world in some way. He finds the details of this door; in a sense he has picked up images like an artist would draw a line.

Hassan Khan: How did you interpret this'?

Anna Boghiguian: Well this was in memoriam; I had done something earlier on his work, but in this I decided to come a bit closer, be a bit more lyrical. These are drawings of Siwa, their function is to bring the presence of the place. The drawings are parallel, they do not necessarily coincide with the same thing the poem does, but they overlap with it. I want the reader to look at it and understand a certain image of Siwa, of the oracle.

Hassan Khan: The drawings seem like fragments, moments in space rather than totalizing landscapes.

Anna Boghiguian: Exactly. In Lamont's poems, he speaks fragmentedly about different things; it is a fragment of a moment rather than the whole space that he is looking at. It is because you and the word are working together.

Hassan Khan: The works seem to be ephemeral.

Anna Boghiguian: Yes, this accentuates the momentary feeling; a lot of these drawings have actually been erased from the paper they were originally drawn on.