Ars Equina, 2006

Liane Lang (b. 1973)

RA Collection: Art

This photograph is one from the Casts series which Liane Lang made whilst in her final year at the Royal Academy Schools. In a statement about the work, Lang describes the series as an attempt to consider the traditional plaster cast from a contemporary point of view. Using re-configurations, which draw out the cast's qualities of gesture and sensuality, the artist aims to animate them away from their academic confines.

In Casts, Lang animated various plaster casts from the RA Collection with seemingly living figures which are, in fact, latex casts. In Ars Equina, the latex figure mimics a life model sitting alongside an ecorche (flayed) horse in the Academy's life drawing room. She is also shown working on a sculpture of the horse's bottom. The artist states that 'the space is luscious and suggestive, the figures occupy the room with ambiguous presence and agency. The role of artist, model and object are blurred in the working figure. This is a reference to female artists and students whose professional ambitions were and are at times undermined by this confusion of identification'.

The Latin title translates as the art of the horse.



Quotes taken from an unpublished interview with the artist, 2017.