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Palestinian Horse

10 de out.
3 min de leitura

Atualizado: há 2 horas

This is the first post in a series on Palestinian semiotics, created from the academic research of artist Kamal Zeidan for An-Najah Palestinian University. Jung states that, unlike the sign, which represents something known and objective, the symbol translates deep, complex, and unconscious stories. Zeidan observes that Palestinian artists living in exile make more literal and realistic art, while artists who remained in occupied territory use more surrealist languages, inspired by Western modern art in the use of symbols and archetypes. These symbols are the theme of this series, and the first of them is the star of the moment: the horse.


The horse has been everywhere on the internet. It is the animal of 2026 in the Chinese zodiac New Year, celebrated today, February 17, because it is a lunisolar calendar, different from the exclusively solar calendar, celebrated on January 1. The horse has been celebrated more than the animals of other years, such as the snake of 2025, because it symbolizes hope, freedom to run, strength, and the fulfillment of dreams and plans. For the same reason of strength and freedom, it is a frequent symbol in Palestinian art, represented as if it were a Palestinian citizen, wearing a kufiya scarf, caring for children, fighting, running toward the sun, or walking somewhat lost in a city, as if looking for a way out, or trying to return home.


A famous story is that of the “Jenin Horse.” In 2003, German artist Thomas Kilpper built a horse from debris from the Jenin refugee camp, destroyed the previous year, during the Second Intifada, in 2002. The sculpture became a historical landmark in Jenin, until it was destroyed in 2023 by Israeli troops.


This Palestinian relationship with the horse goes back thousands of years, to the history of the Arabian Horse, a breed that emerged in the Arabian Peninsula and that, with Islamic and Ottoman expansion, spread throughout the world. It has less common characteristics, such as a smaller head and neck, a less muscular and more curvilinear body, but it is considered very intelligent and, because it originated in the desert, more resistant to hostile climates. For this reason, it became a symbol of war, associated with great conquerors.


But, at the same time that it represents power and expansion, the horse also symbolizes a primitive and impulsive force that, to be better used, must be tamed by modern man, by logic and strategy. The language of control over the horse is parallel to the idea of dominating nature, peoples considered primitive, and even the female body, since the horse functions as a metaphor for virility, and the rider or cowboy as a modern conqueror: an active and dominant subject. Its strength was so exaggerated that, for a long time, racehorses were illustrated anatomically incorrectly, with all four legs in the air, as if they were flying from being so fast. It was only with the emergence of photography that this pose was proven impossible.


In modern counterculture, the horse became an element of subversion. Suffragettes rode horses, because riding, like voting, was an exclusively male practice. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Maurizio Cattelan show horses as a symbol in decline. However, the symbolism of the horse is different in Arab-Muslim cultures, where it is seen as a more spiritual than physical force. In the Quranic myth of the creation of the horse, the angel Jibril (Gabriel) transforms the forces of winds and storms into a horse, an animal that, having been made from the heavens, carries divine strength and knowledge and, for this reason, is the one who guides other animals to paradise. It is an intermediary between heaven and earth, like an angel or an orixá, who guides and protects.


In the Quran, Muhammad made his journey to the heavens mounted on Buraq, a horse with a woman’s face. This difference also manifests in Palestinian counterculture: while Picasso’s and Cattelan’s horses appear in a state of despair and defeat, Palestinian horses appear willing and with heads held high, flying as in representations of Buraq, or else calm with their foals, or walking in a group through scenes of destruction. The Arabian horse, a spiritual creature, is a symbol of the Palestinian ideal of survival: the body, being physical, can be broken; the spirit cannot.





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