Janis Rafa

Janis Rafa (1984, Greece) lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. She was a resident at the Rijksakademie (2013–14, The Netherlands) as an Onassis scholar and she was a fellow at Artworks (GR, 2020). She holds a PhD in Fine Art (University of Leeds, 2012). In October 2023, the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam will present the largest solo exhibition by the artist to this day, combining a substantial number of her moving image films with new sculptural works. Her first solo exhibition in Athens was presented at Opbo Studio, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi (2023). Her work was presented last year at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2022). Her body of work combines film, video installation, sculpture, spatial installations, text, and drawing, in which the non-human, non-logocentric agency is recognized in order to reveal political and ethical dimensions, as another kind of archaeology. Her moving image work is located at the margins of the urban, haunted by stray dogs, roadkills, hunted prey, forgotten ruins, and abandonment. Dead and living, human and non-human beings coexist in an accord of dream and sensuality forming a visual language that relies on muteness, physicality, and the tactile. The cryptic and universal nature of these cinematic worlds is initiated by a certain realism that has very little to do with the landscape’s usual representation, searching for the invisible, the mythical, and the occult.

Her work has been exhibited in various venues, amongst them, the Centraal Museum (solo exhibition, 2019), Fundació Antoni Tàpies (2021), Goethe-Institut Athen (2021), MAXXI (2020 / 2022), State of Concept Athens (2020), Manifesta 12 (2018), Palazzo Medici Riccardi (2017), Centre d’art Contemporain Chanot (2017), Mardin Biennial (2018), Kunsthalle Munster (2017), EYE Filmmuseum (2016/2021), Palazzo Strozzi (2015). Rafa’s work is part of several institutional and private collections, including those of Stedelijk Museum, Centraal Museum, EYE Filmmuseum, Museum Voorlinden, and Fondazione In Between Art Film. Her recent work has been supported by EYE Filmmuseum, ART for the World, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Mondriaan Fund, Netherland Film Fund, and the Greek Film Centre.

Janis Rafa is a participant of the Onassis AiR Tailor-made Residencies program 2023/24.