JANIS RAFA: WE BETRAYED THE HORSES

Janis Rafa’s first solo institutional exhibition in Greece titled We Betrayed the Horses comprises a series of new works in several media, created specifically for EMΣT , which continue the artist’s investigation into the relationship between the human and non-human world, especially that between humans and horses. The exhibition focuses on the idea of desire for the animal’s body, as well as on the need to subjugate and dominate it. Rafa transforms two of the Museum’s exhibition spaces into a highly evocative, immersive installation featuring new sculptural and text-based works, alongside a new two-channel video installation filmed in the vacant spaces of a racecourse and incorporating early 20th  century archival footage.

In We Betrayed the Horses the artist once again turns her insightful gaze to the image of the horse, which frequently recurs in her practice, this time from the perspective of what she herself has termed the performed horse, denoting the idea of the horse as a ‘construct’ of our own making, far removed from its own instincts, physicality and desires; a means, therefore, for the fulfillment of human needs and an instrument of pleasure. The works also examine the gendered, and elitist nature of horsemanship.

The exhibition continues the artist’s investigation into the notions of care and betrayal, sensuality and domination, love and control, but will also further explore the idea of a ‘colonization’ of the animal world, of physical subjugation and non-consensual relationships. While many of the artist’s previous works centre on the animal body, her new work in the exhibition focuses on the absence of that body. Here the image of the horse is missing: its presence is only implied in the human-made inventions and apparatuses shaped around the animal’s body in order to tame and control it, and to express affection and care in what is essentially a misinterpretation of the notion of love.

Turning to the horse as a paradigm of constructed physicality and lost identity, Rafa proposes a visual vocabulary that seeks to draw attention to our tendency to classify the non-human in terms of compatibility, productivity and efficiency, thus highlighting the seductive yet often malicious and sadistic bond at the heart of this age-old relationship.

The works in the exhibition’s first room, and the atmosphere of pervasive sensuality therein, call on the viewer to contemplate the latent eroticism of the relationship between the horse and its rider: a physical relationship which, from the human perspective and in terms of human desire, is at once real and imagined. The exhibition’s second room focuses on the history of equestrianism, horse racing, competitive sport, animal taming and commodification. What is more, the fascinating dystopian images of the closed racecourse in Rafa’s video installation encourage reflection on such notions as gambling, entertainment, glory and triumph at the expense of the animal itself. Rafa’s approach to filming – the characteristic darkness of her scenes, the absence of humans and animals alike, the constantly shifting lighting and specific angles that create the perception of a non-human perspective on the objects and the empty spaces that the camera pans over (not to mention the work’s particular soundscape) all ultimately serve to allude to an otherworldly place, forsaken and consigned to oblivion; to a setting that seems to embody a requiem for man’s wrongful way of relating to the animal and for the latter’s repressed wildness. Through her work the artist builds a space wherein to contemplate, to protest and grieve about animal dignity, ethics and rights and to question our assumptions of reciprocal love and of supremacy over the non-human other.