Janis Rafailidou

Janis Rafailidou (also known as Janis Rafa), born in Greece 1984, is an artist engaging with sculpture, video art and film. She was recently featured in the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia with her 2020 short film Lacerate, and her work has been acquired by various institutions, such as Centraal Museum, Stedelijk Museum, and Fondazione in Between Art Film. Her solo exhibition at the iconic Eye Filmmuseum 2023, showcased videos, films and large-scale sculptures, establishing her practice in the dichotophy of art and film.

Life and work In 2012 Rafailidou obtained a PhD in Fine Art at the University of Leeds. Between 2013 and 2014, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie and in 2020 she was awarded a fellowship at ARTWORKS by S. Niarchos Foundation. She is now living and working between Athens and Amsterdam. I Thought I Found You But I Was Looking on Footage of a Different Country I Thought I Found You, Dad Where Are You?

2012 Exit K1 The title of this film refers to a road exit in the outskirts of Athens (GR), "Exit K1", that leads away from the city, onto a dirt road. There, clandestine migrants travel "invisibly", avoiding the immediate metropolitan area. The work explores the reality of Greek periphery through the citizens' perspective.

2013 Three Farewells This piece consists of three videos shot in 4K, 2.40:1 with stereo sound, namely: Father Gravedigger (20’); Our Dead Dogs (17’); The Last Burial (25’). The trilogy evades anthropocentric conceptions of death, mourning and melancholia, framing them in a post-human narrative. Father Gravedigger The Last Burial

2014 Requiem to a Shipwreck A Sign of Prosperity to the Dreamer Gravediggers

2015 Configuration of the Man Who Has Seen Without Being Seen Requiem to a Fatal Incident Winter Came Early

2016 Untitled There She Blows The Thin Crust of Earth Covers

2018 Take 11: What Remains Is a Wound Disembodied Covers, Footplates#1–2 Another 10kg of Garden

2019 Take 11 (installation) Verism#1–5 In the Flat Field #5818 Verism#2–5 Another 10kg of Garden, and Another 15 kg of Garden (We Know This is A.)

2020 Kala Azar The protagonists of Kala Azar are a couple that works in an animal crematorium and illegally cremate roadkill animals. The film is set in a surrealist universe created by Rafalidou and filled with landscapes, animals, living and dead bodies. Kala Azar has participated in thirty-eight film festivals, among which the 49th International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Hong Kong International Film Festival (2020), receiving a total of nine awards. Lacerate I Am the Daughter of a Sheep

Selected exhibitions

2015

Palazzo Strozzi

2016

Janis Rafa and The Fear of Leaving the Animal Forever Forgotten Under the Ground, EYE Filmmuseum (Amsterdam, NL), from 2016 to 2021.

2017

Kunsthalle Munster Centre d'Art Contemporaine Chanot Palazzo Medici Riccardi

2018

Mardin Biennial Manifesta 12

2019

[solo-exhibition] Eaten by Non-Humans, Centraal Museum (Utrecht, NL), from 2019 to 2020.

2020 MAXXI State of Concept Athens

2021 Bucharest Biennial Goethe-Institut (GR, 2021)

2022 The Milk of Dreams, Venice Biennale

2022 [solo-exhibition] Feed Me. Eat Me. Cheat Me., Eye Filmmuseum