Jana Jacob
Jana Jacob is a Berlin-based painter whose oil paintings explore intimate, often private moments of human existence.
Her works oscillate between self-representation, latent exhibitionism, and voyeurism, addressing the tension between vulnerability and the desire for self-exposure. In her new series She wore blue velvet, Jacob turns to the motif of blue velvet – a material traditionally associated with sensuality, corporeality, and seduction. The velvet appears in shifting forms: as a curtain concealing a figure with only their feet visible, or as a blue velvet air mattress entwined with limbs, the rest of the body submerged in secrecy. In her most recent small-scaled paintings, the material reemerges as two forms interweaving — once as two bananas and once as two balloons — like two lovers. Unlike her larger works, these scenes are cast in a dark blue light — obscure, intimate, and quietly charged. Jacob was born in southern Germany to a German mother and a Thai father. She studied fine arts at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in the class of Professor Christian Jankowski. A year abroad took her to the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy in France, where she studied under Professor Bernard Marcadé. During her studies, she spent several months in an artists’ commune in San Francisco, collaborating with students from the California College of the Arts. Jana Jacob lives and works in Berlin.