Haroon Gunn-Salie’s "On the Line" is a series of artworks drawing parallels between regions within the Global South. The artworks appropriate everyday memorials and silent monuments, shoes hanging off street poles and telephone lines, often overlooked in the peripheries of our cities and the margins of our societies. The artwork is comprised of a series of pairs of shoes, tied together by their laces and cast in bronze. The shoes were removed, stolen from telephone wires in different sites of Favela da Serra in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The installation was originally presented at Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo and included a short film and photographs documenting the intervention at 3 locations, shot in Fazendinha, Canão and Curva do Tênis – Favela da Serra with locals from each community. The film concludes with the last shoe, a bronze sculpture being hung on a line in the periphery of São Paulo.Gunn-Salie’s earlier work was selected to form part of Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 89-plus project, and he has been on major international exhibitions including Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, at the Vitra Design Museum, the 19º Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc Video Brasil and What Remains is Tomorrow, the South African Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia.
