Janaina Tschäpe
CYCLADIC CAFE ART PROJECT
UNTIL JULY 8, 2024
In her staged videos and photographs, she and her friends adorn themselves with balloons and inflated condoms, transforming into hybrid creatures with blob-like appendages, often set against watery landscapes.
The production still from Tschäpe’s video Lacrimacorpus unfolds within a man-made interior, evoking both history and myth. The setting, the castle of Ettersburg near Weimar, drew the artist for its dual historical significance: as a summer residence of Goethe, who composed poems on its grounds, and as a building overlooking the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald. In the video, a female figure, dressed in a costume from Goethe’s era, dances in an empty hall until collapsing to the floor. Her spinning motion, combined with the room’s framing, the mechanical winding sound at the video’s start, and the chiming music, evoke a child’s music box.
This playful allusion, paired with the setting’s pristine elegance, contrasts sharply with the site’s tragic history. The title Lacrimacorpus, Latin for “tear body”, suggests that the bubbles of inflated latex attached to the dancer symbolize a cascade of tears — a silent expression of her buried sadness. Tschäpe makes decisions not simply as the artist, but also as director, costume designer, choreographer, sound editor, and videographer. While the woman in the video may not have authority over her situation, Tschäpe carefully crafts an image of a character lost in a physically altering state of grief.
THE ARTWORK
Lacrimacorpus (Zeitschneide), 2004
C-print, 101,5 x 81,2cm
Edition 4/6
THE ARTIST
Janaina Tschäpe is a German-Brazilian artist whose multidisciplinary body of work has encompassed painting, drawing, photography, video, and sculpture. Initially studying as a painter, Tschäpe turned her attention to sculpture, photography and performance after graduating from Hamburg’s Hochschule für Bilende Künste. Her photography and performance often involve the artist, or other bodies interacting with, or depict the coastal and riparian landscapes of Brazil. In her paintings, Tschäpe takes inspiration from her memories of these spaces to create her large-scale abstract paintings.
Tschäpe holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York and a BFA from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, Germany. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Den Frie Center of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; the Sarasota Art Museum, Florida; the Musée L’Orangerie, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, Arizona; the Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Kasama, Japan; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, and the Contemporary Museum of Art, St Louis. Tschäpe’s solo exhibition “Soy mi propio paisaje” is currently on view at the CAC Málaga, Spain. Tschäpe currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
CYCLADIC CAFE ART PROJECT
The Museum of Cycladic Art presents the Cycladic Café Art Project – part of the Modern Art Program – combining places of social gathering with art. With the ultimate aim of embracing the Greek and international scene of modern art, the Museum presents works by internationally acclaimed and emerging artists linked to its current exhibitions and activities at Cycladic Café. The Cycladic Café Art Project motivates the dialogue between art and everyday life.
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
