Cave Art

Tale of Two Horses

Horse is the most influential animal on the development of history. If there are three things that ushered in the dawn of human civilization, certainly they are: the creation of the alphabet, the discovery of the wheel, and the domestication of the horse. As was emphasized by Alfred Weber, the spreading of horse domestication as a mounted animal, and for hauling carriages, was the catalyst for the blooming of what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age (die Achsenzeit) from the 8th to the 2nd centuries BC.

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Equine Equator

Salted Fish and Instant Noodle

The Equine Equator Expedition is undertaken with two horses whose origin can be traced back to the very soil of the equatorial Indonesia. One horse is a KPI (Kuda Pacu Indonesia, or Indonesian Race Horse), a cross-breed between local Sandalwood mares and imported Thoroughbred stallions. The other is a purebred Sandelwood pony whose ancestors came from Sumba Island. These two companions are able to exchange roles as the riding horse and pack animal. By using a modern racing horse and an ‘antique’ local pony, I imagined myself riding an historical vehicle that spatially connecting me to all corners of the earth where the clop of horses hooves can still be heard, an temporally transporting me to the near future of the earth and simultaneously to the late age of prehistoric times when mankind’s ancestors began to lay foundation for their cultures.