Below Grand is pleased to present Puppy’s Play and Punishment, a solo exhibition of new installation, performance, and video work by Aika Akhmetova. An opening reception will be held from 5-7pm on Saturday, January 17th, and feature a performance by the artist. More public performances will take place throughout the run of the show, with a schedule to be announced via the Below Grand Instagram.
Puppy’s Play and Punishment started in 2023 as a studio ritual. Amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ repression in Kazakhstan, Akhmetova turned to a solitary routine for comfort and freedom: they wore a collar and bowed in front of a mirror before every studio session. This devotional, playful act sprouted tendrils: they clipped on retractable leashes, bound their hands into paws, and wiggled like a puppy. In Summer 2025, Akhmetova took this very private practice and Puppy character out into historically queer public spaces on Fire Island, digging on Cherry Grove’s purple-sand beaches and rolling in the dunes.
At Below Grand’s 53 Orchard St. space, Akhmetova transforms the smaller, interior gallery into a screening room for a multi-channel video installation, shot in peak summertime on Fire Island and now viewed in a cozy den outfitted with soft, welcoming furniture. We see Puppy get walked for the first time; we see Puppy whine amid a sunshower.
In the storefront window, viewers see a web-like mass of retractable leashes, dog collars, chains, upholstery foam, and found objects, many specific to the Post-Soviet region, or to the artist’s preferred site of globalized everyday material culture—the dollar store. Akhmetova will perform within this installation: tethering themself to it, bowing in it, flaunting a repository of Puppy’s movements. A sinister energy lurks behind these shenanigans: looking closer, we notice Puppy’s range of motion is limited, as if by veterinary intervention, and that medical detritus litters the installation—Puppy, it seems, may have been coerced into belly button surgery.
The taboos around sexual expression that initially inspired this project are re-played and transformed in the BDSM references in the work. Bondage and restriction reference kink acts and punishing societal constraints, all of it nutritious chow for Puppy’s defiant mischief. Puppy’s Play and Punishment is about re-framing brattiness and taboo as empowerment, fully letting go, and playing in the face of subjection.