Haig Aivazian

born 1980 in Lebanon,
lives and works in New York .

Artist, curator and writer. Using performance, video, drawing, installation and sculpture, his work weaves together personal and geo-political, micro and macro narratives, in its search for ideological loopholes and short circuits.

The title of the piece refers to Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who famously threw his shoes at then-US president George W. Bush and shouted: “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!” 

In this work, Aivazian weaves varying gestures of violence in sporting and political events, to present a reading of history as sport: a match complete with freeze-frames, instant replays and reverse angles. Time feels like forever. The decades separating the release of the Air Jordan sneakers, the frantic instant where two shoes become projectiles aimed at an occupying president: flying kisses from a people to a hound. The work is composed of a set of hand crafted bronze trophies of petrified historical moments and impossible suspensions that are at once monumentalized, reduced and sometimes altogether removed.

The wall elements further frame a reflection on impermanence, unsustainable presents and presences: an excerpt from an interview with Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi is engraved onto a mirror in Arabic (They know / that were the sun to rise / they would melt / and so, in order to extend their solid state / they opted to extend / their presence in the shade); a marble slab replicates the inscription from the Michael Jordan statue in front of the United Center in Chicago; a diminutive screen shows a video shot in Baghdad and uploaded onto YouTube by an American serviceman.

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