Turner Contemporary in Margate, United Kingdom, presents a compelling exhibition of Armenian-Egyptian artist Anna Boghiguian's work through October 26, 2025. The show, titled "Anna Boghiguian: The Sunken Boat: A glimpse into past histories," features three large-scale installations that showcase the artist's distinctive approach to creating immersive environments that blur the lines between past, present, and future.
Curated by Sarah Martin, the exhibition unfolds across three rooms at the seaside gallery, each containing a single monumental installation. The coastal setting proves particularly fitting for Boghiguian's work, as the gallery sits on the very stretch of Kent coastline where painter J.M.W. Turner once lived for twenty years, capturing the waves and sky in his abstract seascapes. The exhibition opens and closes with seascapes, creating a thematic framework that echoes Rachel Carson's observation that "to stand at the edge of the sea is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be."
The first installation, "The Salt Traders" (2015), originally created for the Istanbul Biennial, immediately envelops visitors in a multi-sensory experience. Vast canvas sails hang from the ceiling like displaced maritime remnants, while a weathered timber boat lies broken into three pieces across the gallery floor. The space is filled with the textures, sounds, and smells of a dystopian shore: pale reddish-brown gravel and sand crunch underfoot, ropes and red yarn are scattered throughout, and eight large wooden frames display drawings alongside actual honeycomb and salt.
According to wall text, "The Salt Traders" is set in the year 2300 CE, depicting a world where climate change has melted ice caps and revealed previously hidden relics. The broken boat's exposed ribs resemble skeletal remains, while its detached steering wheel lies powerless. Boghiguian explains the work's connection to primordial themes: "At first the world was covered in water; the first contact of humans and many animals is with saltwater; an embryo lives in saltwater to protect itself." Despite the apparent chaos, careful observation reveals the artist's precise choreography – the seemingly ragged sails are hung to fold like Renaissance drapery, painted with Mediterranean migration routes and the hexagonal molecular structure of salt.
The second room houses "The Square, The Line and The Ruler. Ambiguous Philosophers / Ambiguous Politicians" (2019), which takes a different approach to examining power structures throughout history. Thirty-two larger-than-life figures painted in wax encaustic on Khadi paper hang suspended from the ceiling above a giant chessboard. The heavy, stiff figures turn and dangle as visitors move through the space, creating an ever-changing configuration of historical influence.
The suspended figures represent individuals who have significantly shaped world decisions, according to Boghiguian. Vladimir Putin hangs alongside poet Rabindranath Tagore, who shares space with former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Queen Victoria, Pythagoras, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, and Napoleon Bonaparte. This unlikely gathering suggests both how the current world came to be and how it might have developed differently under different circumstances. The chess metaphor proves particularly apt, as there are more possible variations of chess games than atoms in the observable universe.
The exhibition concludes with its titular work, "The Sunken Boat" (2025), created specifically for the Margate context. The large final room is bathed in blue light and filled with sand, over which cutouts of marine life, swimmers, and shipwrecks are scattered. The walls alternately stand bare, cast with shadows of hanging figures in swim shorts and snorkel gear, or display fantastically colored cityscapes and landscapes. An accompanying audio piece combines sounds from both Margate and Alexandria, Egypt, suggesting visitors could be experiencing both locations simultaneously.
Boghiguian's artistic language proves refreshingly dismissive of the controlled aesthetics often found in contemporary installation art. Her work is described as "rangy, heterogeneous, anarchic, preciously unprecious, precisely imprecise, and weirdly timeless – like an epic novel, a ballad, a Wagnerian opera cycle." Critics compare her approach to the singular genius of artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov or the highly textured work of Ed Kienholz, noting her ability to create magical, slightly rough-edged worlds with broad strokes.
The exhibition raises persistent questions about time, place, and connection. As visitors move through spaces that could represent past, present, or future – or all simultaneously – they encounter Boghiguian's recurring theme that "everything is connected." The artist serves as a conduit between different worlds and times, suggesting that alternative realities exist alongside our own, waiting to be perceived. Standing at the edge of the sea, both literally and metaphorically, visitors become aware that another world is not only possible but already present – we simply need to learn to see it.
