Jean Boghossian

Jean Boghossian (b. 1949, Aleppo, Syria) is a Belgian-Lebanese artist of Armenian descent based in Brussels. He works with fire, smoke and heat, burning, scorching and deforming paper, books, canvas and wood. He also makes sculpture and ceramics.

Born into a family of jewellers, he grew up around fire used to shape metal. He studied economics and sociology at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, moved to Brussels in 1975 during the Lebanese Civil War, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Boitsfort and Uccle. In 1992 he co-founded the Boghossian Foundation with his father Robert and brother Albert; it has been based at the Villa Empain in Brussels since 2010. That year he began working with fire, in what he calls a "fire dance".

He was one of three artists in the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, with Fiamma Inestinguibile. His institutional solo exhibitions include Traces Sensibles at the Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels (2017), Fiamma Inestinguibile II at the National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan (2018), Flamme Intérieure at the Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju (2019), Dialogue at the Matenadaran, Yerevan (2022) and The Language of Fire at Villa Zito, Palermo (2023), curated by Bruno Corà. He has shown with galleries including Mark Hachem, Paris, Opera Gallery and N Gallery, Seoul.