ARTAX

“Most of us remember the story. And because it never truly ends, I chose to continue it — through my own perception.”

In this series, Bet Orten revisits Artex, the horse from The NeverEnding Story, who sinks into the Swamp of Sadness. The image imagines a different outcome — what if he made it through.

Photographed in the Orlické Mountains, a white stallion is covered in real mud. No post-production, no artificial intervention — just material and raw experience.

The work moves between memory and reinterpretation. Not as nostalgia, but as a gesture of resistance — a refusal to let sadness close in completely.