Janis Rafa and the Fear of Leaving the Animal Forever Forgotten Under the Ground

Laurie Cluitmans selected Janis Rafa’s film Lacerate (2020, 16’) in which a woman with a pack of hunting dogs takes revenge towards her perpetrator: no longer the victim, she becomes the executioner. Lacerate is a reflection on domestic violence, gender-based violence and the notion of inherited violence between man and nature inspired by biblical iconography and Flemish still lifes.

Also screening: The Fear of Leaving the Animal Forever Forgotten Under the Ground (Janis Rafa, 2021, 12'). Stray dogs are locked up at a neglected, post-apocalyptic location: actual fall out shelter created during World War 2 to protect humanity in case of a nuclear war. This film is replete with contradictions: beastly versus human perspective, perpetrator versus victim, subjugation versus power and cruelty versus empathy.

Janis Rafa (1984, Greece) lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. Her oeuvre combines film, video installation and sculpture in which she reflects on human existence by focusing on the non-human. The stories are set on the outskirts of the city, full of stray dogs, roadkills, hunted prey, forgotten ruins and desolation. Dead and alive, human and non-human beings coexist. Rafa goes in search of the invisible, the marginal, the mythical and the occult. Rituals of saying goodbye, burial or exhumation, submission or revenge form a circular story. Her work is currently being presented at the Venice Biennale