Opening: Sunday, 17 May 2026, 11am
Artist Talk: Sunday, 17 May 2026, 3pm
Coinciding with this summer’s World Equestrian Games in Aachen, the Ludwig Forum presents a film installation as a thematic counterpart to the event. Taking its title from the Centaur – the part-horse, part-human hybrid creature of Greek mythology – the installation brings together two short films, projected at scale in the museum’s central hall. Each offers a strikingly different take on the relationship between human and horse.
The installation takes its name from Centaur (2020), a film by German-Iranian artist and filmmaker Yalda Afsah (b. 1983), whose work probes the complex dynamics between humans and animals. Poised between care and control, between affinity and manipulation, the film offers extensive documentary insights into the microcosm of dressage. An intimate observer of the interplay between human and horse, Afsah turns her lens on dressage – a form of domestication not without controversy – and raises uncomfortable questions: who has control over who? Who steers, who follows?
Swiss artist duo Marianne Halter (b. 1970) & Mario Marchisella (b. 1972) approach the subject from a different angle in Pferde über Wiese [Horses Across Meadowlands] (2014), applying a poetic, gently humorous touch. The short film follows a breakneck-speed ride on a bicycle: a man in a black suit careens downhill, accompanied by the sound of hoofbeats and whinnying from a speaker strapped to the frame. The absurd spectacle of the cyclist, his speaker flailing wildly, inevitably and decisively gives way to the overpowering image of a great herd of horses thundering past. Marianne Halter and Mario Marchisella – she an artist, he an artist and musician – make collaborative work that moves between space and action, sound and image. Starting from everyday actions and settings, they disrupt the relationship between sensory signals – here, between image and sound – to open up new associations.
The film installation is presented as part of the Aachen World Equestrian Championship Special.
Curated by Esther Boehle.
Credits:
(1) Yalda Afsah, Centaur, 2020, film still
(2) Marianne Halter, Mario Marchisella, Pferde über Wiese [Horses Across Meadowlands], 2014, film still.