艺术家这样形容这件作品：“问题之马批评了我们不该以战争和毁灭的方式来实现物竞生存。此装置以马的视角冻结了时间，而旁观者都变成了悲剧的目击者。”问题之马由艺术家Claudia Fontes设计，并展出于2017威尼斯建筑双年展阿根廷馆。一组三件雕塑作品包括一座纪念碑式跃起的以及原尺寸大小的男人女人雕像，顶部天空悬浮着碎石如同坠落的雨滴，而其在灯下映衬的影子又像是被支离破碎的动物形态。艺术家构想了一种激进的方式来解读人与马的关系，重新诠释了国家起源神话。在她的解读中，动物被囚禁在用自己能量建造的监狱中，这座兵工厂式的建筑作为装置的展厅表达了囚笼的意向，破碎石头代表了肢解的生命力，雕塑般的造型带人穿古至今。

Fontes explains: “The Horse Problem is a work that addresses the failure by our species to survive without wars or destruction”—a visionary idea in the times we live in. And then she goes on to say: “This sculpture installation is a scene frozen in time from the horse’s point of view, where the spectator is an unexpected witness to the tragedy.” The Horse Problem, the installation that Claudia Fontes presents in the Argentinian Pavilion of the Biennale Arte 2017, takes on these and other questions, putting forth a scene frozen in time: three figures—a monumental bucking horse accompanied by a life-sized women and young boy—are juxtaposed with rocks suspended in the air as they rain down casting a shadow that creates a mirror-image of the animal broken up into pieces. Thus the artist formulates a radical reading of the relation between man and horse, that mold that casts the origin myth of the nation. In her reading, the animal, captive in a prison built through the harnessing of its own energy—the manufacturing architecture of the Arsenal that houses the pavilion—dissolves with its vitality the statuary canon that throughout the course of history reduced it to a mere functional element in commemorative institutional narratives.

在狭小的空间里，动物的脸与女人的手相互触碰，一个强有力的节点将这些分散的雕塑紧密相连。从马的鼻腔中咆哮出来的怒气，吹起了女人的裙子和头发，而女人的手抚摸着马，试图让它归于平静，在她上方，睁大的双眼，被艺术家以不同的颜色展示，揭露了马受惊的和惊恐的情绪。这双凝视般的眼睛在整个作品中突显出来。这三件雕塑互不相望，而是将这种凝视施加于观察者的身上。

In the small space where the animal’s face and the woman’s hand come to touch, there is a knot of intensity that holds together the various meanings of this installation: the nasal cavities that the air rushes out from, ruffling the hair and skirt of the woman; the huge hand of the woman that comes close to calm the animal down; and, just above that, the wide-open eyes which jut out in their materiality and their color, revealing the emotional condition of the horse, disturbed and afraid. Those eyes which stand out initiate a game of gazes,That they are gazes that do not cross: none of the three characters looks at another. Added to these gazes is the implicit or potential gaze of the viewer, which is not returned either.

一些坠落的石头散落在地上。女人站在前方，一只手伸向前方，另一只手捂住双眼。在她面前，一匹巨大惊蛰的马，双耳立起，双眼睁大，以狂暴的方式发泄着，如同困兽之斗。散开的石块在空中静静炸开，形成跃起的凶兽倒影，爆炸的停顿动作仿佛昭示着时间的戛然而止。男人在另一侧手握碎石做蜷缩沉思状。男人似乎听不见，女人似乎不愿看见，仅用手去触摸，去感受，去权衡。时间暂停，画面冻结，感觉蔓延开来。

A few fallen rocks are strewn on the floor. Further ahead a woman is standing with one hand stretched out before her and the other covering her eyes. In front of her, in the middle of the scene, an enormous, alert horse with its ears perked and its eyes wide open, bucks in the enclosed space of the building where it finds itself trapped. A spray of rocks is being propelled by a silent explosion towards the horse, and the rocks in turn give o a shadow in the shape of the silhouette of the animal as it bucks, as though the explosion were originating in the very effect that it is producing and were shifting the course of time. A young man is crouched to one side with a rock in his hand in a reflective pose. A young man who seems not to hear, a woman who prefers not to see, hands that seek to touch, to feel, to weigh. Time is suspended, the image is frozen, the senses reorient themselves.