New York, a monumental pigeon on the High Line: it is the work of Iván Argote

A monumental pigeon peers out at everyone on New York’s High Line: it is the hyperrealistic work of Iván Argote, an artist born in 1983, in Bogotá, Colombia, but now living and working in Paris. the aluminum and hand-painted sculpture is titled Dinosaur (2024) and was first unveiled as a proposal for High Line Plinth in 2020. Placed on a concrete pedestal, Dinosaur intends to reverse the typical power dynamic between bird and human, soaring above the Spur, above the pedestrians and motorists who travel 10th Avenue every day.

“The name Dinosaur,” the artist explains, “refers to the size of the sculpture and to the pigeon’s ancestors who ruled the globe millions of years ago, as we humans do today...the name also serves as a reference to the extinction of the dinosaur. Like them, one day we will be gone, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will continue to live, as pigeons do, in the dark corners and empty spaces of future worlds. I think this sculpture could generate a strange feeling of attraction, seduction and fear among New Yorkers.”

Dinosaur, like the pigeons that inspired it, is meant to reflect the evolution of the city and confront everyone with our ever-changing relationship with the natural world and its inhabitants. These often ignored and mocked creatures, which seem to overpopulate urban areas, first arrived in the United States via Europe, probably in the 1800s. Originally kept as pets, they were used primarily as reliable message carriers: in fact, pigeons can always find their way home. This ability made them indispensable in wartime: they were used as military messengers in both World War I and World War II, quickly carrying messages from the trenches to the front lines.

Dinosaur seeks to celebrate its anonymity in the urban landscape while targeting classical monuments erected in honor of great men. Highlighting their origins, Argote also reminds us that, to some extent, they are all migrants. Even the pigeon initially migrated here and made the city its home, like millions of other “native” New Yorkers.

Iván Argote ’s art focuses strongly on issues of social justice and historical processes, often inspired by his childhood in Bogota. Raised in a family with a long tradition of political and social activism from the 1950s to the present, Argote questions, through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, our intimate relationship with others, institutions, power and belief systems. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale installations and performances, Argote proposes new symbolic uses of public space and challenges traditional ideas about who and what we commemorate, revere and remember.

New York, a monumental pigeon on the High Line: it is the work of Iván Argote

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