Weaving Culture, the first solo exhibition of Anna Boghiguian at the National Gallery of Armenia opens on May 15, 2026. 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 June–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 microhistories 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 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 weavers, together with local dyers, translated the diasporic artist’s vision 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. Today, 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 halls, the exhibition features a series of original paintings, thirty seven handmade carpets and tapestries, photographic and video documentation, as well as materials from the artist’s residency and the weaving process. The exhibition will be on view at the National Gallery of Armenia from May 15 to August 15, 2026. A series of public programs will accompany the exhibition, along with the launch of a bilingual Armenian–English catalogue, published by AHA collective. 

The “Weaving Culture” residency and exhibition project is supported by the Delegation of the European Union in Armenia within the framework of the “Rapid Response Mechanism.” Through this initiative, the project addresses the urgent socio-economic challenges faced by women weavers forcibly displaced from Karabagh and empowers them through the residency program with Anna Boghiguian.