Janaina Tschäpe


Janaina Tschäpe is a German artist.

Biography

Janaina Tschäpe was born in 1973 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in São Paulo, Brazil. She received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Hochschule für Bildende Kueste, Hamburg in 1997 and her Master in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. Tschäpe’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture. Incorporating elements of aquatic, plant, and human life, Tschäpe’s universe of sublime forms shift between representation, fantasy and abstraction.
Her paintings exist in a state of their own becoming, linking the process of artistic practice to lifecycles found in nature. Each brushstroke partially occludes a previous mark; their physically sensuous surfaces give way to topologies of finely calibrated hues. In her performative photographic and video works, Tschäpe’s otherworldly creatures inhabit hybrid states of being. The female form is often pictured with ballooning appendages extending from the figure, sometimes overtaking her body to inhabit a fluid space between human and cellular organism. The artist explores different medias such as painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture. The ocean, sea creatures, mermaids, half human creatures, are constantly being revisited by her imaginary, as well as invented landscapes. While in her earlier works Tschäpe often placed herself within the landscape, she now explores her memories, her inner-images, conjuring her travels and expeditions to a deeply-layered remembrance. Whether through her paintings and drawings, photography or films, Tschäpe reacts to her life experiences in an intense meditative contemplation of the landscape.
Janaina Tschäpe’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, and is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Colecão Gilberto Chateaubriand MAM Museu de Art Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Collection Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia, Madrid, Spain. Recent projects include Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary; CCBB Rio de Janeiro; Jeu de Paume, Paris; University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; The 59th Minute with Creative Time in Times Square, New York; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and The Irish Museum of Modern Art.
The artist lives and works in New York since 1997.
In 2013, Tschäpe collaborated with Brazilian jeweller Ara Vartanian on a jewellery collection.

Selected solo shows

Press:
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2003