Janaina Tschäpe was born in Munich, Germany, in 1973, raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and lives and works in New York. A German-Brazilian artist, she works across painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation, developing a visual language shaped by aquatic landscapes, organic forms, hybrid creatures, female bodies, memory, and imagination.

Educated at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and the School of Visual Arts in New York, Tschäpe began with photography and video exploring the body in relation to rivers, seas, forests, and natural environments before developing a painting practice focused on abstraction, color, gesture, and the sensory experience of landscape. Her works move between fantasy and nature, figuration and abstraction, often evoking personal mythologies, marine beings, mermaids, plant-like organisms, and imagined territories.

She has exhibited at institutions including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, New York; and Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, as well as in museums and galleries across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Her work is held in major collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho; MAM Rio through the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection; Mudam Luxembourg; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.