Riddles for Resilient Tongues

‘Riddles for resilient tongues’, solo, OPBO, Athens, 2023. Curated by Ioanna Gerakidi.

‘Riddles for resilient tongues’, the solo exhibition of Janis Rafa, through a new series of drawings and sculptural works coming along with her film Lacerate (2020), traces the mouth as its main axis to speak about power plays, dominations and submissions, mechanisms of control, the undoubted value of consent, the indisputable significance of agency and along with them, their psychosocial and political cartographies; not only among us, human beings, but among all species.

Shrieking whispers lingering over the unspoken words of tongues once tamed, love letters composed for grievances and losses, still waters echoing the thirst of carrying the weight of existence, or of a labour unwanted or unwaged, they all come together asking the question: What’s the sound of a multiverse where all of the world’s oxymora reside?

Through encountering these qualities, the exhibition brings in the forefront subjects thinking through gender roles and dynamics, domestic and non-domestic environments, impositions of hierarchical structures occurring in spaces, supposedly safe. It longs to make us, audiences, active observants of a spatial choreography that requires an unlearning of the domineering, canonized gaze. And through this subversion, others times and spaces and worlds are unleashed, exposing that which hides under the phenomenically pleasing, speaking the story of unwilling suppression and wounding hierarchy.
Yet, these worlds, find themselves in parallel with their opposites, with omniverses some call dirty and untamed, which yet, do allow the space for empowerment, growth and self-advocacy, when built in mutuality. How can these controlling, manipulative tools, symbolically disclose other longings and belongings when used in interpersonal, consensual, pleasurable acts? How close can we look at this other hedonism, without criticizing it, without appending demonic connotations on it, without letting our entitlement to exclude it as vulgar? By touching, looking with and listening through these contradictory schemes, Riddles for resilient tongues is an invitation towards resisting and fighting against oppressive mechanisms, whilst licking our wounds, loving our otherness, owning our raptures. [Text by Ioanna Gerakidi]