Kelsey Espinoza

Four Riders and Their Horses

Human civilizations have often been obsessed with death and the desire for an explanation for it and its process. Various cultures throughout the world have used Gods and religions to explain our beliefs about life and the predictions that we’ve had about our future, in this life and the next. Four Horses and Their Riders explores our relationship to death and the eventual death of civilization through the imagery of apocalyptic themes within the Catholic religion, its artwork, and its aesthetics.  

This series examines the coming of the apocalypse according to Christianity, as well as the glorified brutality that the Four Horsemen bring. This series of collages takes inspiration from the Book of Revelation in the Bible and explores the art of stained-glass windows. Each collage examines one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and depicts their prophesied impacts on us: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. These collages are created using personal photos and magazine clippings. The viewer is invited to participate by kneeling, looking through the book, or lighting a candle.   

From devastation to cleansing,  

All beings interpret the end differently.  

Indoctrination and our history can form our beliefs.  

Loving what can destroy us and destroy each other is often  

Understood as reasonable even if we don’t see its destruction.  

Repentance, indulgence, fighting, begging, regretting, ignorance, joy.  

Even if some see our end as a failure of humanity, some see it as a blessing.  

I saw that in the right hand of the One sitting on the throne there was a scroll that had writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals. (Revelation 5:1)