Raureif

The publication Raureif is a literary and illustrative debut by the artist Gabriela Gerber. Raureif takes a closer look at physical contacts between people, animals and plants from an ecofeminist perspective.

The book’s seven stories have a women character out there in the world, often encountering animals living in the wild. The familiar and the unfamiliar collide, and each impacts the other. Moments of empowerment emerge but so do moments of powerlessness. Realities become mixed with fictions. Almost a hundred drawings oscillate between human, animal and plant forms. The drawings are created on a smartphone screen – a medium that conveys proximity and intimacy as much as it does distance.
The drawings bring the narratives into an atmospheric space with their gesturally controlled line and reduced colour palette, while the idiomatic language reinforces the moods. And the glossary provides explanations of idiomatic terms, as well as plants and animals. In an after echo, Ines Kleesattel questions our understanding of wildness and domestication.