At Soft Walls, we invite artists and curators that inhabit Athens permanently, occasionally or momentarily to share excerpts, points, reasonings and thoughts around their practice in the context of an artist talk.

Soft Walls function as listening and exchanging platforms, invitations and opportunities to meet, share and fill the space with words and thoughts that we consider vehicles and catalysts for our shared experiences.

This month’s Soft Walls, present artist Janis Rafa

Wednesday June 19th at 20:00

Language: English

Duration: 45 minutes

Janis Rafa (1984, Greece) lives and works between Amsterdam and Athens. She was a resident at the Rijksakademie (2013-2014) and a fellow at Artworks (2020) and Onassis Air (2024). She holds a PhD in Fine Art at University of Leeds (2012). 

 In Dec 2024, Rafa will present a new body of work as part of her solo exhibition at EMST. In 2023, she had a solo at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, presenting a large number of films, video installations and large-scale sculptures. In 2022, her work was presented at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Cecilia Alemani. 

Her body of work combines film, video installation, sculpture, spatial installations, text, and drawing, in which the non-human, non-logocentric agency is recognised 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.

Her work has been exhibited in various venues, amongst them, opbo studio (solo, 2023), Centraal Museum (solo, 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). Her recent work has been supported by EMST, Eye, ART for the World, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Mondriaan Fund, Netherland Film Fund, and the Greek Film Centre.