Reverse Cowgirl? Janis Rafa's BDSM Ranch at EΜΣT Athens
Janis (Millennial, Greek) centers the issue of animal abuse through the visual language of sex and domination. But she doesn't get away without some spanking either.
This goes out to the equestrian girlies
Janis exhibits within another exhibition — like a Russian babushka doll, if you will. Her show We Betrayed The Horses is part of Why Look at Animals?, a huge thematic investigation of animal rights through the lens of contemporary art. I’m still debating whether I want to review that one as well…
Working generally around the relationship between humans and animals, Janis turns her attention to the abusive relationship towards horses here. The horses that equestrians claim to love and cherish are trained to become the best, win one prestigious award after another, and break all records. And as soon as they can’t keep up, they’re discarded and butchered. They don’t get to retire; they either serve their masters’ egos, or they don’t have a reason to live at all. I’m thinking back to that one equestrian who abused her horse at the Tokyo Olympics a couple of years ago and became a meme. And last year, another one got disqualified for repeatedly and unnecessarily whipping a horse during a training session. Especially disgusting, considering that the person filming was laughing all the while…
Sticks and Stones Won’t Break My Bones…
The EΜΣT is a multi-story, light-flooded former factory in the South-East of Athens. I didn’t expect to walk into a black-tiled room with pink neon lights. The windows were also covered with pink foil. I wondered about the tiles. I’m not a certified horse girl, and I don't want to appropriate this culture, but I don’t think horse stables are usually tiled. Here, it looks as if Janis turned a slaughter room into a nightclub. I looked up the notorious Kit Kat Klub in Berlin and… let’s say that there are some parallels… You know what Rihanna said: Sticks and stones won’t break my bones, but chains and whips excite me. That’s literature.
The symbolism of sexual domination is everywhere. Janis mounted equestrian equipment on hangers and called the piece Erected Bridles, Reins, Whips and Mouth-bits (2025)… The quantity of leather and metal makes me forget their original purpose. This stuff now looks as if it belongs in a sex shop.
In the press release, the museum states that the exhibition takes on “the perspective of what [Janis] herself has termed the performed horse, denoting the idea of the horse as a ‘construct’ of our own making, far removed from its own instincts, physicality and desires; a means, therefore, for the fulfillment of human needs and an instrument of pleasure.” You know how they say that sex is about power and power is about sex? The highest rule of BDSM is consent. Sexual powerplay is only pleasurable for all involved parties when they establish communication and consent. This, on the contrary, is unethical BDSM fantasy and reality, which Janis exposes. In pink neon letters, Janis puts this one-sided domination into words on an adjacent wall:
your genitals rubbing my back / your hands whipping my butt / your heels spurring my ribs / your glories killing my needs
Hold on for a sec *holds imaginary phone to her ear*: Wattpad writers called, they’re proper fumin’ that they didn’t come up with that furry fanfic sooner. Some might question how Janis came up with equating (or at least connecting) colonialist domestication of horses and their sexualization. Shall I remind the Great Council of DreamWorks’ Spirit (2002)? How do I even explain to a not chronically online person the generational bisexual panic sparked by an animation studio’s decision to make two horses objectively hot? But let’s be clear, this is not about sexualization in the sense of making animals attractive. The perspective is rather how there’s always something erotic about power and domination.
Janis’s works play subtly with those dynamics. Water-bowls for Mouth Contentment (2023) consists of eleven black automatic water dispensers in a row. May they only drink if the master allows it? It was at this point that, with all the nightclub aesthetics in mind, I realized how incredibly Anne Imhof (Gen X, German) coded this show is.
I was reminded of another artist looking at the wall with an arrangement of saddles and equestrian boots: Alizée Gazeau (Millennial, French) presented flattened saddles turned inside out at Stallmann Gallery in Berlin last year. Sure, same material, but there’s something different going on visually: Janis positioned the saddles correctly, while the boots are upside down. What an intriguing ratio: For each pair of boots, there’s three saddles. Don’t let the podcast douchebags see this or they’ll use it for some misogynist analogy… By presenting the saddles in a series, I’m thinking less of their function and more of their visual similarities. And there’s something anatomical about them… I look at the title: Saddle-vulvas and Boots (2025). Well, that makes sense. An ironic resemblance, considering that it was considered improper for women to ride horses sitting with legs apart, because that could pleasure those dangerous clits that the men were so eager not to find.
Janis cheekily reverses the dynamic of consent with This Ηorse was Μore Τhan a Good Ride (2025). Let’s take a moment to appreciate that sultry choice of words. She lined the corridor ceiling with almost 3kg of horse tails. The tick hair neatly separates the corridor from the next room. It’s cut to dangle at around eye level, so the strands stroke my forehead as I pass through. Especially awkward considering that the horse tails imply that I’m standing underneath the horse, basically at butt level. Now isn’t that a chef’s kiss of Kiss my ass rhetoric? Contrary to this one, Whipping Butts & Riding History (2025) left me underwhelmed. It’s just used rubber mats from horse stables that she layered on a wall and extended onto the floor. Feels like a space-filler.
Why the long face?
In the second room, the light from the double-channel video installation reflects onto the wall with real award rosettes from competitions dating from the 70s until the 2000s: The Triumphs of Riding Another (2025). The multitude of those colorful badges and ribbons makes me think of commemorative walls in cities that people create when someone tragically dies.
In the video on the opposite side, The Absence of your Body has Shaped the Spectacles of our Past (2025), harsh light searches through a race track and the arena building at night. It reminds me of search lights in heist or prison escape movies, where they search for an escaped inmate. I see awards on a table, and a few moments later, a carnival ride wall with “a horse walks into a bar” written on it. But the overall vibe is not funny or entertaining at all. The visuals alternate with historical footage of cruel horse training and races. I hear haunting, indecipherable mumbling piercing through the gloomy sound.
The piece wasn’t as strong as it could have been. I felt like it simply echoed what Janis had already established in the first room. Her film The Space Between Your Tongue and Teeth (2023) in the Why Look at Animals? section felt more urgent, more real. It showed horses going through training in claustrophobic spaces under conditions that looked like torture. Here, Janis keeps it ghostly and surreal instead. She removed the living being and limited its presence only to traces and historical footage. But I believe the physical presence is necessary to make the final step to real empathy. Otherwise, what has this rich peoples’ sports to do with me? Individually and class-wise? I fear that Janis might have removed the issue so far from reality that it loses its weight. That second room might have been one step too far.
Janis Rafa: We Betrayed The Horses, until October 5, 2025, at EΜΣT Athens.
EΜΣT — National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
Kallirrois Ave. & Amvr. Frantzi Str.
(Former Fix Factory)
11743, Athens
Website
Instagram: @emstathens @janisrafa
I said it once and I’ll say it again. There’s something in the air right now, considering how much horse-themed contemporary art there’s around. I’ll keep investigating this, stay tuned!
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic