In 2003, the artist completed a guest study program under Wim Wenders (*1945) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. After graduating, she enrolled in a graduate program at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, which she completed in 2011. That same year, Reich received the Konrad von Soest Prize from the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe for her visual experiments, which humorously explore the boundaries and possibilities of artistic practice. Artistically, she moves freely between the genres of film, performance, painting, and photography, combining them within her works. In her primarily performative video works, she reflects on painterly processes, media-specific characteristics, or fragments of our everyday reality. Reich uses digital photography, for example, to bring sociological research on gender roles of girls and women into public space through posters. In 2016, she was awarded the Women’s Culture Prize by the Rhineland Regional Association. Johanna Reich lives and works in Cologne.

Work Title: Virgin’s Land

The video work Virgin’s Land shows the artist herself on a deserted beach. With her arms outstretched, she holds a golden emergency blanket that flutters like a flag in the strong wind. The clear and minimalist visual language creates space for diverse associations—in an unmarked landscape, with an unmarked flag. A perspective that encompasses both dynamism and stillness. The rescue blanket can mean the difference between life and death for refugees; as a golden surface in the image, it traditionally refers both to material preciousness and to a supernatural reality. While Johanna Reich deliberately presents herself as androgynous or neutral in some of her earlier videos by wearing neutral clothing with hooded tops, here she is consciously recognizable as a female protagonist—a female gaze into the past, the present, and the future. The prospect of a new beginning?