Haig Papazian
Habibi Festival • Nov 2 - 5, 2021
Haig Papazian is a Lebanese-Armenian multidisciplinary artist, composer, and architect born in Beirut and currently based out of New York. He is a founding member and violinist of Mashrou’ Leila, the Lebanese band whose electro-pop anthems about political freedom, race, gender and modern Arabic identity have challenged the status quo of the Middle-Eastern music industry. An architect by training, Haig participated in the inaugural edition of the Home Workspace program in Beirut and completed his graduate studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. His visual work explores narratives of undocumented histories and reclaimed futures. Papazian’s art has been presented in Sharjah, Beirut, Bonn, London, Trondheim and New York. Haig is a SHIM:NYC 2021 resident – a residency program created by Artistic Freedom Initiative, Tamizdat, and Westbeth Artist Housing – and a 2021 New York Voices Commission recipient from Joe’s Pub. As part of the Habibi Festival teaser week, Papazian will perform new work from the first phase of his new solo work, Space Time Tuning Machine (STTM), a cross-disciplinary musical narrative exploring the multifaceted meanings of home.
As a member of Mashrou’ Leila, Haig has performed at sold out venues and festivals around the world. The band has recently collaborated with MIKA, Hercules and Love Affair, Yo-Yo Ma and Joe Goddard from Hot Chip. Papazian has been an artist in residence at NYU, campaigned with Greenpeace in an initiative to promote solar energy and participated in the BLOCK 9 & BANKSY Creative Retreat alongside fellow musicians Brian Eno and Roisin Murphy. Papazian has held public talks at NYU, Columbia University, Concordia, Dartmouth College and Sciences Po in Paris. Prior to the pandemic, he performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of Oliver Beer’s Vessel Orchestra. Some of his recently published writings include the NYT op-ed “The Cost of being Queer and Arab” and his essay “Beyrouth et Beyrouth, travail en cours/Beirut and Beirut: work in progress” in France Culture.
