Artist and Rijksakademie alum Janis Rafa will introduce her practice in art and film and reflect on her recent exhibitions We Betrayed The Horses’(EMΣΤ| Museum of Contemporary Art Αthens, 2025) and Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me. (Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, 2023). The talk will be followed by a screening of her film Lacerate that was presented at 59th La Biennale di Venezia (2022).
Rafa’s diverse practice, brings together various media, from featured films to video installations and from sculptural gestures, to performance, drawings and texts, in order to create immersive environments and experiences. Her work uses the relationship between humans and animals, to focus on seemingly contradictory schemes such as love, desire, and seduction, but also pain and penetration, power plays and intrusion, trauma and control. The animal often performs as a symbol, an emblem or a parable, aiming to talk through the multifaceted aspects of historical and psychosocial, of erotic and interpersonal dynamics, longing to provoke one question: Up to which extent can we challenge our senses and vernaculars in order to see through and beyond the obvious?
