The aluminium horse embodies the idea of a gift that never reaches its recipient - a promise of movement that remains unfulfilled, frozen in time and space. Its cold, metallic surface reflects the rigidity of an object intended to carry but unable to do so, an object rendered useless despite its form, which suggests a purpose. Assembled from multiple parts, its visible screws and joints reveal a construction that holds together but is fundamentally broken, a fragile illusion of stability.
Like a car abandoned before it has even hit the road, the horse stands as a monument to misplaced hope, evoking the way distant dreams often become unattainable mirages. Its polished aluminium gleams like the body of a machine built for speed, but it remains motionless, unable to take anyone anywhere. Echoing the wooden rocking horses of childhood, it mimics the shape of an object once associated with play and imagination, but its metallic body denies it any sense of warmth or comfort. In its immobility, it speaks of false hopes, of journeys imagined but never made, of expectations built up only to remain stuck in place.
I remember my father returning after years of absence, trying to win me back with words that sounded grandiose but empty. It was then that he promised me a horse—a real one, waiting for me in Afghanistan. Not a memory from before, but a new pledge, offered in the wake of his disappearance. Yet, like so many of his assurances, it never materialised. The horse remained distant, a token of unattainable love, dangled in front of me like a mirage. In many ways, it reflects those broken promises: a symbol of movement that never came, a vessel of desire linked to a past I was never able to claim.
aluminium, paper label, ribbon
2025
