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1. Blood, Sea 2. Botanica 1-26
Janaina Tschape's videos, installations, photographs and drawings share an appeal that ties together a European-style rationalism with an exotic mysticism that is incompatible with rationalism.
The cosmos, the changes that occur in the natural world, the evolution of organisms, sex and mythical elements are apparent in her work. Seeing her work, one cannot help but be reminded that we are a "living being."
100 Little Deaths (1997-2002) is an expression from her early days where she used her body and a series of work in which her current art practice is rooted.
Blood, Sea (2004) was an extension of 100 Little Deaths. We see her projected onto four screens, underwater and wearing objects that expand like balloons and a seaweed-like sash.
She who in the sea has been transformed into a new variety of living creature merely floats there, surrendering her body to the flow of the water. The liquid that circulates through the body is blood. Tschape's own skin and her costume under the water give the impression of merely being thin membranes that separate her blood and the water in the sea. We associate her with the reproductive act endlessly repeated by mankind no matter how high the level of our culture, and it is erotic.
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