“My garden”

Inflatable objects, sculptures, photographs, videos, drawings and paintings are the basis for the creation of Janaina Tschäpe's fantastic universes. The artist has participated in exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the New Museum (New York, USA) and her works are part of the collections of important institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the Moderna Museeto ​​(Stockholm, Sweden), the Inhotim Center for Contemporary Art (Brumadinho, Brazil), among others.

The half-Brazilian, half-German artist, who began her training in the 1990s, spent years of her life constantly traveling – she has lived in cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and New York. She began using photography and video as ways to document her relationships with these places, but the results became work objects. She also created several inflatable objects, some of which were integrated into female bodies and were three-dimensional. After a ten-year hiatus, the artist returned to painting and drawing. Janaina states that all media are complementary. They add up and relate to each other in the works developed by the artist.

The presence of water and the sea, as well as plants and forests, is very strong in all of Janaina's work. She creates her own universes, narratives for places and characters. She likes to mix fiction and reality. She uses the former as a basis for inventing the latter and returns to visuality with her imaginary creatures and lush environments.

As Luisa Duarte points out, “Organic forms have always been present in Janaina’s work. Sea, water, mermaids, half-human, half-non-human beings... It is no coincidence that the ocean is seen as an image of the unconscious. Formless, fluid, always in motion, impossible to hold in your hands. The artist’s work has, in the dreamlike dimension, an unavoidable point, which is why it is often associated with the creation of a fantastic world.” (DUARTE, Luisa. Ondulações na terra plana. O Globo, 11.06.2012).