Luchezar Boyadjiev

This photo shows the statue of Friedrich the Great on Unter den Linden, but without the rider. As the title suggests, Friedrich II is on vacation. The work is part of a series of equestrian statues from around the world which, by removing the riders, Boyadijev transformed into monuments to horses. With this edit, he pokes fun at the monuments’ original repressive function. In the case of the monument to Friedrich the Great, the subject of its peculiar history is also broached. Walled in during World War II, subsequently ostracised as a relic of another time and put into storage, it was reintroduced as part of a move from the GDR government to open itself up to the world in the 1980s. Today the equestrian statue of Friedrich the Great is one puzzle piece in the historical pseudo-reconstruction of the Prussian grand boulevard.