Eaten by Non-Humans, Centraal Museum

Eaten by Non-Humans is the first museum solo exhibition of the young Greek artist Janis Rafa (b. 1984). Rafa uses films and sculptures to create pictorial narratives that illuminate universal themes such as mortality and our ritualised approach to loss, as well as the relationship between humans, animals and the landscape.
‘Non-Humans’ is a term that alludes not just to the animal world, but also refers to robotics and computer-driven systems. Eaten by Non- Humans can be seen as a visual essay that addresses the question of the hierarchy between humans and non-humans. Do non-humans experience feelings of love, compassion and sorrow? Do non-humans have rights? Rafa’s work touches on such political questions, she examines the usual ranking order between humans and non-humans and subjects it to poetic disruption.

The films Father Gravedigger and Our Dead Dogs (part of the trilogy
Three Farewells) are characteristic of Rafa’s work and her method.The titles allude to the ritual of burial. Amid a vast and largely abandoned land- scape, in the ragged edges of the city, Rafa introduces simple but dramatic situations. Rafa’s films are located at the intersection between fiction and documentary. In consequence, her work is realistic and yet has an intangible air to it. Without dialogues or soundtrack, Rafa creates slowly sliding, visually overwhelming scenes in which she reverses and subverts the roles between humans and hon-humans. Here we find, for instance, a dog tending a deceased human being. And a hybrid woman with eight nipples suckling young puppies. By using mythological or archaic symbols and metaphors, Rafa invokes the collective memory of her viewers. She shows the reversal between humans and non-humans not only in the story itself, but also in the way in which she depicts
the relationship between them and the filmic choices she makes in this regard.Thus, it is not without significance that her films are wordless. Just as animals have no words, she presents humans here without lan- guage, without the opportunity to react or to name. With this cinemato- graphic gaze, Rafa uses light-dark contrasts to convey a post-apocalyptic atmosphere of mourning. In addition, the specific way in which she frames the dramatic events emphasises an atmosphere of intimacy and tenderness. At other times she films with an ‘extreme general shot’, which gives the landscape a majestic look and reduces the isolated figures to insignificant creatures, diminutive parts of a larger whole.

Text by Laurie Cluitmans, Centraal Museum