What Horses Dream of is an exhibition created by artist Priscila Fernandes for the new edition of Situ-akzioak at Tabakalera, a program that produces spaces to play, activates the senses and encourages learning and experimentation through art.
The exhibition looks at the rhetorical figure of the horse to raise questions around our notion of the heroic and proposes a space through art in which we can escape representations of power and privilege. The horses of those heroes, freed from the dominance of their masters, escape to imagine new narratives alongside the visitors. In the end, Fernandes proposes to subvert the notion of the hero to make it our own.
The walls of the room are covered by a mural made up of layers of drawings that alternate the imagined futures created by school children from IPI Karmengo Ama School and a group of families together with drawings of the artist’s vision of the present. Mechanical horses with heads customised by participants, gallop through the space accompanied by a melody composed by Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca. A platform takes us to another point of view in order to observe the galloping beasts and read poetic reflections on what equestrian sculptures are thinking while on their pedestals.
The installation consists on a vinyl mural, mechanical horses, a soundscape, viewing platform, materials to build horse heads and a poetry book.