Ian Belton

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

Ian Belton is a Native New Yorker of Iranian-Irish extraction whose antidisciplinary practice spans theater, film, writing, dramaturgy, and media-based collaboration. These six images demonstrate a boundary-crossing, archive-driven performance methodology that stages the archive itself. Drawn from international collaborations in Argentina, Singapore, and New York, they document the spatial integration of responsive video and live bodies — the physical friction between institutional surveillance records and the vulnerable live performer. Grounded in Persian heritage and utilizing the Black Wave historical prototype, the work bridges academia and documentary theater, offering a safe, dynamic mode to address contested Middle Eastern history beyond polarized binaries. Family geography becomes geopolitical mechanics. Each image holds contradictory times in one frame, with live text and responsive media manipulated in real time. I work from a mixed-race inheritance — classical rigor and formal rupture — to excavate political amnesia, state violence, and how public catastrophe colonizes private life, destabilizing narratives that make history feel settled.

Artwork