Anna Bogejian invites you to the game of kings

All of the work on display was created for or for Bregenz, according to KUB Director Thomas de Tromer during a press tour Thursday. The works allow you to delve into the story and the surprising connections between their characters, which Boghijian draws. “Art keeps you alive and heals your soul,” the realist artist said before her work The Uprising. Two colored sails extend from the ceiling in the wind of a fan. The multiple representations of the protesting people run through the tissue like red veins, and everything seems to be moving and always has been. The work is complemented by an overhanging depiction of chief intellectuals who always foretell and contemplate upheavals.

Photo series with 4 photos

The artist with Armenian roots, born in Cairo in 1946, placed a chessboard on the first floor, parts of which were already on display in the spring of 2022 at the exhibition “KUB in Venice” on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. In a studio in the post office building in Bregenz, Bogéjian expanded his arsenal of characters over several weeks: now Marie Antoinette, or rather her hairdresser and dressmaker, Maria Theresia, heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, Bertha von Suttner, Felix Salten and Stefan Zweig, Josephine Becker, Jean – Opposite Jacques Rousseau or Ludwig Wittgenstein, the other characters hover over “Chess” (2022).

Artist dealing with SS Heim’s doctor

The artist also deals with the Austrian SS doctor Aribert Heim who fled to Egypt. Punctuated by the gallery and its fine teeth, Bogjian conducted extensive research. For the serial work “A Time of Change”, she arranged 96 drawings in a world history similar to a dense excerpt. Some of the photos show Heim’s stay in Cairo, others were taken during his stay at Versailles, and there are also scenes from the concentration camps and the Haitian and Russian revolutions. The graphics feel like explosions of a continuous stream of consciousness, captured in the moment, as everything connects to everything else, influences each other, and casts shadows. Boghigian’s graphic story seeps like water through deep layers, her ink and color penetrating the paper, and the pencil expressing and affecting events at the same time.

The artist herself becomes part of the story

It’s almost oppressive upstairs from KUB, because you become part of the story the artist tells. The sound of explosions resounded across the dark floor, your singing sings. Colored cones project light like searchlights across a rotating circular mirror surface. On it, as if written on a finger, letters and documents scattered. A guillotine hangs from the ceiling and my voice reads a text by the artist that stretches from the French Revolution through Russia to the period of Aribert Heim in Cairo. The artist calls this work “Diving into the Dark Diving Box”. You have to immerse yourself in what is happening politically – and say goodbye then as now.