SPE - PERFORMANCE AND EXHIBITION SPACE   

27 APRIL - 22 SEPTEMBER 2019

Avelino Sala
Riderless Horse

winning project of the open call of death and dying

Avelino Sala   Riderless Horse   2019   Video/Performance   Courtesy of the artist and Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio

Contemporary art is often engaged in narrating Death. In the funerals of great "warriors", since the times of Genghis Khan his horse was sacrificed, after that rite: in some cultures, including the North American, it happened to the horse to be saddled and "walked" in the funeral as a horse without a rider.

The particular aspect of this symbolic action is that the rider’s stirrups, boots and sword are set facing backwards.  This military practice that was seen at Kennedy’s burial, projects us towards a heroic idea of death.  Avelino Sala (Gijón, Spain, 1972) posits this video-installation, created as a result of a performance, as a symbolic exercise of anti-memorial, which calls into question the idea of the hero and leader, represented in classical statuary mainly as a man on horseback, and asks whether it is necessary for those politicians to be in the foreground, those (fallen) heroes of the present day.

Perhaps the contemporary society, the one that already lives in a liquid society, the horizontal community that no longer needs more riders, heroes that are placed on a pedestal. In this way, this relationship with the idea of overthrowing power, of going down from the pedestal not to the statue, but to the rider of it. The horse, as the only witness of memory, remains. The project  also represents the fall of the patriarchy, that hetero-patriarchal dominant figure, the "beloved leader" fell off the horse. indicating that in the end, we have our destiny, because we do not need to follow anyone.

Avelino Sala - Riderless Horse