Janaina Tschäpe

Artist Janaina Tschäpe, who works in a diverse range of mediums—painting, drawing, photography, film, and installation—is inspired by the female body, as is evinced by the embryonic forms and ambiguous characters populating her work. Tschäpe was born in 1973 in Munich, but she was raised in São Paolo, where the lush Brazilian environment profoundly impacted the young artist. Today, nature plays a central role in Tschäpe’s work. Her dense paintings, for instance, are comprised of colorful and organic shapes that together convey polymorphous, dream-like landscapes. Indeed, throughout the artist’s output, real-world elements blend with memory, myth, and fantasy, aligning Tschäpe with the Surrealists before her.

Tschäpe received her BFA from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited globally, including at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Contemporary Museum of Art in St. Louis, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, among countless other galleries and institutions. Tschäpe currently lives and works between New York and Rio de Janeiro.