In a multi-channel video installation, together with my horse Lola, I examine the historically burdened relationship between humans and horses – with a particular focus on the entanglements of power, gender, and violence in the 20th and 21st centuries. The starting point is the enormous loss of horses in both World Wars: approximately 8 million in the First World War, between 3 and 5 million in the Second World War.
The horse – for centuries a symbol of military control, virile representation, and instrumental availability. Against this legacy, Centaur*ism offers an alternative reading: the figure of the "horse girl – Pferdemädchen" as a hybrid symbiont – caring, emotionally connected, and acting beyond classical power axes. Instead of the rider: relationship. Instead of control: coexistence. Together with Lola, I approach an embodied confrontation with transgenerational traumas shaped by war, patriarchal structures, and economic exploitation relationships. The work understands itself as a critical re-reading of hegemonic animal-human relationships and questions how the symbolism, communication, and "value" of the horse have shifted throughout modernity – from the heroic equestrian figure à la Putin to the feminist riding culture of leisure and care horse.
