I Smell a Massacre
Combining sculpture and video, Raphaela Vogel’s composite installations stand at the crossroads of mythology, science fiction, feminist theory, animism, punk, and diverse universes that she jumbles in a seemingly anarchist but nevertheless surprisingly controlled way. I Smell a Massacre places the vision of a herd of sheep filmed by a drone side by side with self-portraits of the artist and a sculpture that resembles a huge carcass. Consisting of tubes, pipes, a hookah, and a band of tassels from an old piece of furniture, the whole is set to the sound of bass. At once director, sound engineer, light technician and leading actress of her films, Raphaela Vogel spins a web of symbols that questions our relationship to violence but also to the animal world, with the leitmotif of birds, which happens to be the meaning of the artist’s name in German.