There is a millennia-long relationship between humans and horses, which has been documented throughout the history of art, literature, and storytelling. These documents show histories of agriculture; of violent domination of land via hunting scenes; fantasies of colonialism and countless historical statues of male war heroes astride seething mounts. However, horse stories are also famously ‘stories for girls’; complicated romances in which girls get to be the main characters; queer stories, and ultimately stories of care and desire.
As well as rich symbols, real, present horse-human relationships are particular in their requirement for collaboration and physical intimacy across complex power relationships due to the relative size of horses; their reliance on human care; and the position of the human rider around and astride the horse in both competitive and leisure horse-riding. I am particularly interested how being-with horses might destabilise ontological differences between human and animal, and in how we might exceed representations of horses to make art with horses as a part of this new chimeric relation.
