The Space Between Your Tongue and Teeth, 2023
Three channel video projection, 9′
Supported by: Dommering Foundation, Eye Filmmuseum, EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Courtesy of the artist
Janis Rafa’s three-channel video installation titled The Space Between Your Tongue and Teeth is an immersive film featuring a highly cinematic narrative. The work explores the notions of care and exploitation and how these translate in the context of the human-animal interaction, as well as the issue of non-consensual relationships. In the video – filmed in an enclosed space where race horses train – we observe as the horses cooped up indoors are forced to run on electric treadmills. Archival footage of surgeries performed on military horses is spliced into this narrative, while another scene shows a vet giving an animal an injection, recalling the importance attached to a horse’s dental care. Realism meets fiction as naked men are seen lathering up an animal’s body, conjuring the idea of physical contact between man and animal and evoking erotic connotations of desire but also control.
Janis Rafa was born in Athens, Greece; she lives and works between Athens, Greece, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Janis Rafa’s artistic research employs different media from feature films and short videos, to sculptures, drawings, and text-based works. Her work focuses on the relationship between human and non-human animals, raising issues about seemingly contradictory schemes, such as love and domination, seduction and consent, mortality and loss. Her films and installations – often positioned on urban fringes and in decaying landscapes – focus on the silent presence of animals, allowing them to become the leading force within her poetic and timeless compositions.
