When I was four years old I thought that horses would have a certain, and deeply rooted,
connection to me in my life. In fact, this is one of my very first memories of remembering my
own thoughts. In a Descartian way the horse introduces me to myself, I am a thinking being,
and therefore I am.
I am not the only one to declare that this animal - the horse - plays a strong connection to the
self on a deep, fundamental level. When speaking to any owner of horses, you will get a
confession of a particular kind of passion, a kind of dedication and amazement around the
nature of horses and the difficult art of riding. For there was a time when riding and
horsemanship surely was seen as an art form, and today - when art moves into so many
aspects of society - we can approach the horse and pose that it could be a thought-based
vehicle for forming new cultures around more complex relationships between humans and
other species.
This was one aim of
New Horse Cultures
, a series of lectures, actions and interactions
between horses and newcomers to Sweden, specifically from the war in Syria, that took place
on the Swedish island of Öland in the spring and summer of 2016 through the artist collective
Kultivator and the organisation Kulturfrämjandet Öland Kalmar. Kultivator artist Malin
Vrijman views these interactions as a form of sculpture. The space between the participating
women in the
New Horse Cultures
and the horses on the farm was indeed tangible for anyone
who visited these events. There was a seriousness applied to the interaction between the
refugee women and the horses in the project, a kind of seriousness that is lovely to watch in
real life and the photographic documentation that surrounds the project. In this way we can
talk about a form of social sculpture, and in the documentation of the project we can also
follow the effects that these meetings around horses have had on participants. There was a
new understanding of the local heritage from the island of Öland through engagements around
the horse. There was an access to Swedish language through the very specific terminology
used around horses. And, maybe more importantly, new friendships and a kind of rootedness
has formed through the interaction with horses in a foreign place that, if nothing else, is
becoming a temporary home for refugees from the Syrian war.
Globally, but also specifically in relation to the island of Öland and the region of Småland,
horses have had a profound and measurable effect on societal aspects such as farming,
transportation and warfare.
Öland, a scenic and rugged island off Sweden's east coast near
Kalmar, was until recently one of the main Swedish depots for breeding miltary horses, and
the island was even home to a particular breed, the Öland horse. The last Öland horse is long
gone but today there is growing support for efforts to resurrect the breed using an Estonian
pony breed, a project that is not without a debate, but in itself presents an image around the
complexity of human interplay with the lives and fate of animals. Artist Signe Johannessen
plays tribute to the Öland horse by bringing its history back into our consciousness. She
invited veterinarian Tove Särkinen and artist Erik Rören to help her adjust the skeleton of the
very last Öland horse – a mare named “Lilly” –
so that the skeleton of Lilly would get an
aura and strength and composure around it. Signe had a sense that some parts of the skeleton
was wrongly mounted, and this turned out to be the case. With the help of an expert such as
Tove Särkinen these bones could be correctly put in place. Signe Johannessen also made a
new exhibition diorama for the remains of the animal. For Signe it was important that the
public would meet the remains of Lilly face to face. The mare was no longer to be put in the
corner of the school where she had been kept, and by inviting the women of The New Horse
Cultures Study group Signe also shared this artistic process. The refugee women were
allowed to join the veterinarian and Signe Johannessen in finding the position of “eternal rest”
for this last Öland horse. Art student Marcus Persson, currently doing his second year in the
arts programme of Ölands Folkhögskola has asked to create a "conversation piece" with
Signe’s art work. Marcus Persson’s version of Lilly will be exhibited in the window of the
educational studio in the museum.
What will be felt outside of the museum is a different and much darker legend of Öland. On
the 29
th
of April in the year 1574 the Swedish King Johan III asked that all dogs on the island
of Öland were to have one leg cut as he wanted no hunting by the common people of the
island on his royal hunting grounds. The whole island of Öland was at this time a colony of
the royal Swedish family. In the castle gardens of the city of Kalmar stands a tree legged
horse in the year 2016, and its connection to the Öland legend is an arbitrary one, a poetic
connotation as faith often has it when it comes to art. The three-legged full-sized horse
sculpture in bronze is called
Ż
ieme, a dismembered word since the Maltese word for “horse”
is “
Ż
iemel”.
Ż
ieme is a permanent-temporal piece by visual artist Austin Camilleri and as
such an investigation into the irksome equestrian monuments of imperial power around the
world. The piece was first exhibited at the city gates of Valletta, Malta, for the first edition of
VIVA (Valletta International Visual Arts festival) in 2014.
Through the centuries horses in sculpture and painting have given expression to power. Often
white horses, lifting kings to higher realms, almost touching the skies, through powerfully
flexed muscles. The white horse holds mythical and religious significance for many cultures,
from Celtic and Native American to Christian belief systems, perhaps most notably as one of
the horses of the Four Horsemen of the Apoclaypse - Death, Famine, War and Conquest -
foreshadowing the end of the world.
In the T
he Last Öland Horse
we include many horses from the museum collection - found
exactly in these positions of power, or perhaps expressing freedom and relationship to the
land as they roam and graze the vast fields of this part of Sweden. One of the most prominent
portrayers of horses from Öland is a founding father of the museum collection, celebrated
landscape painter Nils Kreuger (1858-1930). Nils Kreuger has a specific fascination with the
horse and his drawings and paintings portray a heartfelt understanding of the intricate spatial
connection of the land and the horse.
The equestrian world of riding and sports is often criticized for its elitism and inability to
embrace otherness. Show jumpers at times make fun of incomprehensible pompous aspects of
dressage, and dressage riders will perhaps snicker at riders of their own sport riding the
“wrong” breed of horse. In terms of gender, the riding world remains one of the few sports
where men and women compete against each other on equal terms, yet more men seem to
attain higher competitive status while riding schools, at least in the western world, are often
filled with girls. These elements of horse cultures are of course interesting material for artists
dealing with aspects of societal power imbalances. Swedish artist Shiva Anoshirvani has
made a film calling for a critical gaze on the ethnic whiteness of the stable environment, using
the equestrian world as a backdrop for structural racism prevalent in society. In the film
The
Tame and the White
a young racified girl is kept in a subservient position carrying saddles
whilst the white girl who ́s family has had the financial means to buy her a horse ponders why
the black girl has not come further in her riding abilities. The inherent hierarchies are clearly
visible in the positions of labour. In the film there is a “smell of urine and old colonial
powers”.
Artist Sasha Huber also addresses racism in her installation
Louis Who?
What you should
know about Louis Agassiz
, and introduces a theme with
a historical point of departure. Louis
Agassiz, a Swiss scientist in the end of the 19
th
century, was widely recognised for his work as
a glaciologist. However, the celebrated intellectual has a darker past as one of the early
thinkers of apartheid and the race policies in the southern states of America. In a film
produced on location at one of the sites that carry Agassiz's name in celebration of his
historical significance, Sasha Huber rides onto Plaça Agassiz in Rio de Janeiro on a black
horse, appearing as a character from Agassiz’ time, reading a statement that tells the true story
of this man among people that surely do not share the sentiment of the man that has given his
name to a square in their neighbourhood.
Where Sasha Huber and Shiva Anoushirvani come to analyse both historical and current
aspects around colonisation and race through the use of a horse, Signe Johannessen addresses
the inequality between man and woman in a poetic film where the horse is in focus,
symbolizing the power inherent in this animal which was transgressed at a time in
Signe
Johannessen's
life when she was a young girl and the friendship of a horse was all the comfort
she had. The film
Thank You for Carrying
follows a kind of inverted narrative of one of our
oldest Greek tragedies, the killing of the father in “Oedipus”. In Signe Johannessen’s
biography, as a girl her father kills her beloved horse and as a woman she chooses to learn
how to slaughter horses, and becomes the one to euthanase a priced Lipizzaner stallion with
grace on the day he needs to die. As a woman she has in a way risen above life and death, by
connecting herself to the rite of killing. In the film we see the face of the dead horse (carefully
preserved by Signe Johannessen) sink from the surface into the depths of dark - perhaps
healing - waters. The film was realized on location on Öland at Hors Brunn, one of the many
cult places where old horse bones have been found alongside human remains.
Thank You for Carrying
pays tribute to all horses in the world that have carried humans
through troubles, be it war, famine and more so through spiritual darkness and towards a fight
for personal freedom.
Horses evoke sensations in human beings, they are accessible through their beauty, yet hold a
sense of integrity, perhaps even mystery. As the world becomes more complex we seem to
cling to the horse, we give it new meaning in horse therapy or leadership training
programmes, we create new business where horses are entertainment or perhaps just a
beautiful accessory in a fashion shoot. Perhaps this is why the horse is so popular as a design
element, embraced fondly by the lovers of British culture, but also juxtaposed against old and
new takes on form and fashion.
Whilst researching beauty in relation to the writings of art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900),
artist Salla Tykkä came to follow one of the most well known European horse breeds, the
Lipizzaner, a breed associated with classical dressage, and strongly connected to military
history. The breed follows Europe’s violent past as the stud farms are divided and change
place according to Europe’s shifting empires and how its maps are redrawn.
Today
Lipizzaners are
bred in many places, most famously to the general public through The
Spanish Riding School in Vienna, where white stallions perform the most difficult classical
dressage movements daily in front of an audience where few understand the military
connection.
Lipizzaners are born in a dark black or chestnut coat and gradually turn white as they mature.
Battling with the highly romantic ideals of Ruskin, Salla Tykkä portrays the Lipizzaner as it is
controlled and strained to its limits through the most difficult dressage movements that can be
performed, the “airs above the ground”. Her work by the same name,
Airs Above the
Ground
,
uncovers western ideals of beauty and is significantly one of the few works in
The
Last Öland Horse
to reveal the perspective of the animal itself. In one of the frames of the
film we meet the gaze of the horse as it is expertly controlled by its masters while getting
ready to perform the most difficult task of raising itself onto its hindlegs in the levade and
then elevating into a capriole, a controlled leap through the air.
In the novel The Lives of Animals by JM Coetzee the author ́s alter-ego, animal-rights activist
and writer Elizabeth Costello says:
“To thinking, cogitation, I oppose fullness, embodiedness, the sensation of being – not a
consciousness of yourself as a kind of ghostly reasoning machine thinking thoughts, but on
the contrary the sensation – a heavily affective sensation – of being a body with limbs that
have extension in space, of being alive to the world.”
The Last Öland Horse
also exhibits crafts and design in relation to the horse with works by
craftsmen from Öland from the 20
th
century as well saddles by contemporary saddlemaker
Jonatan Habib Engqvist.
