Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play 'Rhinoceros' from 1959 depicts a sleepy French town whose inhabitants gradually metamorphose into rhinoceroses and come to peacefully accept the destruction and violence that this collective transformation entails. The piece was a response to the rise of authoritarian ideologies in the period leading up to WWII, and it explored broader themes of conformity, collective and individual responsibility, mass movements, mob mentality, and morality.

The concept of “rhinocerisation” – that is, the process by which individuals and entire societies follow destructive, authoritarian, nationalistic currents and become indifferent to the atrocious implications of such developments – was first introduced in Hebrew in the 1960s following the reception of Ionesco’s play. Today, the verb “to rhinocerise,” or lehitkarnef in Hebrew, is in everyday use when observing, discussing, or analysing such societal transformations. Surprisingly – or dramatically – this verb, which emerged in the political and cultural backdrop of the post-WWII era, appears to exist in no other language than Hebrew.

Building on this linguistic, political, and historical context, Itamar Gov presents 'The Rhinoceros in the Room. Or: A Tale of Banality and Evil', a monumental installation that takes over the 11th-century church that forms part of Kunstmuseum Magdeburg.

Filling the medieval space and blocking visitors’ access to the nave of the church, the work consists of a 9-metre-high and 17-metre-long Northern White rhinoceros, accompanied by a polyphonic sound composition emanating from all directions.

The original sound piece was composed for the installation by Bruno Delepelaire (First Cellist of the Berliner Philharmoniker) and recorded across multiple channels by Delepelaire himself, Moritz Huemer, and contralto opera singer Noa Beinart (Bayerische Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper). Drawing from medieval church chants, the haunting text of Goethe’s 'Erlkönig' (The Elf-King, 1782), and a Hebrew lullaby titled 'Hitragut' (Repose, 1935), the composition is both soothing and unsettling – a swirling polyphony that blurs the boundaries between a sweet dream and a horrific nightmare.

The monumental creature, enchanting and intimidating at the same time, evokes not only Ionesco’s vision of collective nationalistic transformation but also a minor philosophical episode: Bertrand Russell’s challenge to Ludwig Wittgenstein to prove that “there is no rhinoceros in the room,” a thought experiment about empirical facts and the limits of proving negative existential statements. The installation also draws on the local incident of the 'Guericke-Einhorn' (the Unicorn of Magdeburg, 1663), a pseudo-scientific attempt to reconstruct a mythical creature from the skull of a rhinoceros, the legs of a mammoth, and the horn of a narwhal.

Bringing together history, myth, religion, science, and divertissement, and operating within the traditions of surrealism and absurdism, the work presents a literal rhinoceros in the room: an unignorable presence, an uncomfortable truth that is ultimately nothing more than a coating filled with air – an urgent alarm disguised as a circus attraction, a soothingly terrifying goodnight song.