EMST PRESENTS WE BETRAYED THE HORSES BY JANIS RAFA

The horse is missing—not dead, not forgotten, but hauntingly absent. In We Betrayed the Horses, Janis Rafa doesn’t mourn the animal—she mythologizes it. What unfolds is a surreal altar to the horse: eerie, seductive, and a little kinky.

Part domestic dream, part dystopian sadomasochistic dressing room, the show drifts through velvet saddles, projections and sculptures that flirt with a colorblind-like parallel reality. No animals appear, yet the horse is everywhere—its presence felt in textures, echoes, and erotic after-imaginary. It’s a parallel universe where desire, control, and ritual collide.

Rafa unravels our strange compulsion to dominate what we claim to love. The horse—idealized, colonized, tamed—becomes a mirror for our projections. And yet, in its absence, it rises. We Betrayed the Horses is a requiem, but also a resurrection: the animal returns as icon, myth, and ghost, wild beyond our reach.