City by the River - Amazon
Many of Boghiguian’s works explore major bodies of water and their role in facilitating migration, pilgrimage, trade, and cultural exchange, while also serving as vectors of disease, colonial violence, and enslavement. These series present the river as a counterpoint to land-based concepts of site, cutting through national and other boundaries. This work—one of three dedicated to major rivers including also the Nile and the Ganges—focuses on the lush natural beauty of the rainforest bordering the Amazon. The artist’s poetic text on the first sheet describes the establishment of rubber tree plantations and the forced conversion to Christianity of native Amazonians by Portuguese colonizers. The images focus specifically on the opera house, or Teatros Amazonas, constructed in the city of Manaus in 1896 and modeled on Milan’s La Scala to "entertain" the Portuguese colonizers. In one of the drawings, a Mickey Mouse balloon suggests the ongoing intrusion of capitalist interests in the region.
Artwork Details
- Title: City by the River - Amazon
- Artist: Anna Boghiguian (Egyptian, born Cairo 1946)
- Date: 2013–14
- Medium: Graphite, encaustic, gouache and colored pencil on khadi paper, in eleven sheets
- Dimensions: a, c, d, e, f, g, h, j, k: 11 13/16 × 8 1/4 in. (30 × 21 cm)
b: 11 13/16 × 15 3/4 in. (30 × 40 cm)
i: 8 1/4 × 11 13/16 in. (21 × 30 cm) - Classification: Works on Paper
- Credit Line: Purchase, Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. Gift, 2024
- Object Number: 2024.102a–k
- Rights and Reproduction: Courtesy the artist
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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Anna Boghiguian
2013–14
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1951
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2016
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