An­na Boghiguian (born 1946 in Cairo) will be award­ed the 30th Wolf­gang Hahn Prize of the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst at Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Cologne. The award cer­e­mony will take place on 8 Novem­ber 2024.

The Egyp­tian-Ca­na­dian artist of Ar­me­nian ori­gin has pre­sent­ed one of the most exc­it­ing po­si­tions in con­tem­po­rary art since her par­ti­ci­pa­tion in the Bien­nials of Is­tan­bul in 2009 and of Shar­jah in 2011 and in dOC­U­MEN­TA 13 in 2012. She is known for her fig­u­ra­tive mu­rals, (note)books, draw­ings, paint­ings, pho­to­graphs, and sculp­tures, as well as large-scale in­s­tal­la­tions. Boghiguian’s work is of­ten spon­ta­neous and fre­quent­ly cre­at­ed on lo­ca­tion. She is con­sid­ered a per­cep­tive ob­serv­er of the hu­man con­di­tion and con­veys an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of con­tem­po­rary life in which her con­tent os­cil­lates ex­treme­ly clev­er­ly be­tween past and pre­sent, po­et­ry and politics, his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. Her art­works cele­brate a glob­al­ly unit­ed hu­mani­ty and fo­cus on the af­ter­math of his­tor­i­cal events and their con­flicts in or­der to iden­ti­fy op­tions for the fu­ture through an artis­tic reap­praisal.

As a daugh­ter of an Ar­me­nian watch­mak­er, An­na Boghiguian studied po­lit­i­cal sci­ence and eco­nomics at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo in the 1960s. In the ear­ly 1970s, she moved to Ca­na­da and studied art and mu­sic in Mon­tre­al. Boghiguian has her stu­dio and resi­dence in Cairo, but al­so lives and works in Eu­rope, Asia, Afri­ca and Amer­i­ca. Win­n­er of the Gol­d­en Li­on for Best Pav­ilion (Ar­me­nia) at the 56th Venice Bien­nale in 2015, she al­so par­ti­ci­pat­ed in the tour­ing ex­hi­bi­tion "Con­tem­po­rary Arab Rep­re­sen­ta­tion" in 2003, the 11th and 14th Is­tan­bul Bien­nale in 2009 and 2015, the Sao Pao­lo Bien­nale in 2014 and 2023, and has re­ceived so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions at the Castel­lo di Rivoli in Turin, Kun­sthaus Bre­genz, Mu­se­um für Ge­gen­wart­skunst Sie­gen and SMAK in Ghent, among others.

The Wolf­gang Hahn Prize is award­ed an­nu­al­ly by the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig. The award is pri­mar­i­ly in­tend­ed to ho­n­our con­tem­po­rary artists who have al­ready made a name for them­selves in the art world through an in­ter­na­tio­n­al­ly recog­nised oeu­vre, but who are not yet as well known in Ger­many. The prize mon­ey of a max­i­mum of €100,000 is fund­ed by the mem­bers’ con­tri­bu­tions and goes to­wards the ac­qui­si­tion of a work or group of works by the artists for the col­lec­tion of Mu­se­um Lud­wig. The name of the prize ho­n­ours the me­m­o­ry of the pas­sio­nate Cologne-based col­lec­tor and paint­ing conser­va­tor Wolf­gang Hahn (1924-1987), who was com­mitt­ed to the art of the Eu­ro­pean and Amer­i­can avant-garde.

Anna Boghiguian’s exhibition, Living Amidst the Death, is on view at Sylvia Kouvali in London until Saturday 16 November.