HOW MUCH VENICE WATER DO YOU CARRY IN YOUR LEGS, STILL? HOW MUCH TAIPEI WATER DO YOU FEEL IN THE FIELDS, NOW?

The publication documents artistic works and texts by Sophie Schmidt which were made in 2021 as part of two residencies (German Study Centre Venice and Taipei Artist Village, Taiwan). Various elements become connective tissue linking her journeys first to Venice and then to Taipei: the water of the two island cities as well as isolation, only being able to leave the hotel room temporarily under special pandemical conditions, or not at all. Hence her artistic engagement revolves around questions of being in the world as an existential, physical and psychic exploratory process into spaces of one’s own and spaces of the strange and unfamiliar. The pictures, collages, performances and text miniatures in this book give insight into inner happenings that are tightly interwoven with the stage of outer happenings observable from the bed, on this side and the other side of the window. Motionless in the body, but emotionally in upheaval, two main motifs characterise the works, which expressively pulsate with brushstrokes kept mostly within red tones: firstly, the juxtaposition of Renaissance Venice and contemporary Taipei, and secondly, body extensions and prostheses. Liquidating borders, body and world link, interleave, marry, melting into leaves, fruits, birds, fishes, landscapes, architectures and spaces, becoming ornamental, flowing and hovering, penetrated by omnipotent water at once seemingly joined by the body and yet also flowing through it. —Carina Herring