Raphaela Vogel: De mens is geen vogel

Z33 is delighted to present the first Belgian solo-exhibition of Raphaela Vogel De mens is geen vogel (Man Is No Bird).

Raphaela Vogel first gained international recognition for her immersive video installations, which employ emergent technologies such as drones, 360-degree selfie sticks and 3D scanners. Accompanied by hypnotic soundtracks and vocal performances, the artist often appears as the protagonist in her work.

With deadpan humour, Vogel channels the anarchic spirit of punk rock into her theatrical, all-consuming installations. Throughout the exhibition, one notices the recurrence of themes, symbols and motifs such as animals, womanhood, music and sound, architecture and public space, popular culture and technology.

Raphaela Vogel’s artworks offer “little shocks,” brief moments in which the body reacts faster than the mind. The works engage image, sound, and space to shift focus from comprehension to sensation. By activating her body and voice as material, Vogel uses self-expression as a tool. This does not always make her work personal in content, but it is distinctly personal in address: channelled through the body of the artist. 

Vogel works with contrasting forces rather than narrative structures: monumentality and fragility, the technical and the physical, humour and terror, banality and myth. This contrast also arises in the experience of the work: attraction and repulsion, pleasure and discomfort often occur simultaneously. Within her practice, it is precisely in these oppositions that sparks fly, crickets hum, blood pulses, planes scream, sirens cackle and eyes weep. To quote the artist, “I don’t know whether it is because of my considerable rottenness or the breadth of my heart that I can love everything.”

Raphaela Vogel’s artworks create a world of their own that is not detached from reality, but rather magnifies, distorts, and puts pressure on it. This effect resonates with the complexity and contradictions of contemporary life, where a sense of clarity often proves hard to grasp. 

Biography
Raphaela Vogel (b. 1988, Nuremberg, Germamy) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, as well as the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. From 2014 to 2016, she was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Vogel has exhibited widely and internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2025), Kunsthalle Giessen (2024), De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2023), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2019), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and Kunsthalle Basel (2018). In 2022, Vogel was included in the Venice Biennale exhibition The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani. 

Curator: Kevin Gallagher