The celebrated art object immortalizing the dog rescue at the Sayran reservoir has gained attention on social media beyond Kazakhstan. Kursiv LifeStyle takes a look at how the sculpture has resonated with audiences worldwide.
Art Daily Dose, with over 22 million Instagram followers, posted about the monument. The post emphasized how the sculpture recreated the moment when people formed a human chain to save the dog.
Users in the comment section called the monument «incredible and well-deserved» and the story itself an example of true humanity, saying that such actions restore faith in humanity and even calling Kazakhstan the «greatest country in the world.»
Another post by a foreign page garnered millions of likes and heartfelt comments, some of them admitting the story made them cry and expressing admiration for the act of humanity.
The monument was installed over the riverbed of the Big Almaty River on March 18. The composition recreates the moment of a dog rescue that touched millions of social media users in 2016, when a dog fell into the water and a young man climbed down to reach it but could not climb back up the steep embankment. Bystanders formed a human chain by linking arms and managed to pull out both the dog and the man. A video of the incident went viral, garnering around 15 million views on the Daily Mail’s Facebook page and 6.5 million views across other social media platforms at the time.
Notably, the author of the installation is Kazakh artist Yerbossyn Meldibekov, famous for the «Falling Nazarbayev» sculpture.
«What I also like is that this monument was conceived as an interactive one. The original idea was that the last figure in the sculptural group would extend a hand, so that any passerby could take it and, in a sense, continue this chain of kindness,» said Erken Kagarov, program director of the Almaty City Design School.
