The moment you submerge underwater, the body suspends its contract with gravity; forms elongate, the sense of distance dissolves, and lines blur. German-Brazilian artist Janaina Tschäpe’s world on canvas feeds precisely on this feeling of weightlessness. Combining oil paint, watercolor, casein, and colored pencils on the same surface, the artist constructs fluid maps composed of biomorphic layers where pigments bleed into one another as if through a process of osmosis. For Tschäpe, the canvas is a space for recording the reshaping of landscapes and myths in memory through water, rather than depicting concrete, familiar geographies.
Her personal life trajectory, stretching from Germany to Brazil, from coastlines to open seas, reflects directly onto the artist’s color palette. Linking the human body with seashores in her early performances and surreal photographs, Tschäpe has carried this intuitive bond entirely into an abstract painterly language in recent years. As organic forms on the canvas appear and vanish like currents on the seabed, they continue to guide the viewer through mental realms whose boundaries have yet to be drawn.
During this period, the artist stands before audiences through her institutional exhibitions across different points in Europe. While her exhibition Conversations with the Sea at Hastings Contemporary in England focuses on her long-standing dialogue with the sea, her Normandie Impressionniste presentation at the Aître Saint-Maclou venue in France showcases her layered interpretation of the relationship between light and water. Experiencing their final days in September, these exhibitions offer the opportunity to experience nature not as an externally observed landscape, but as a living ground merging with human interiority.
Artist Note from NO-26 Editor
Artist: Janaina Tschäpe
Current Exhibitions: Conversations with the Sea (Hastings Contemporary, June 13 – September 13, 2026) / Normandie Impressionniste (Aître Saint-Maclou, Rouen, May 29 – September 27, 2026)
Aura: Fluid abstractions of the German-Brazilian artist carrying underwater weightlessness, melting forms, and personal memory topographies onto canvas through layered painting techniques.
