Bianca Tschaikner and the Nomadic Inspiration for Creation
Bianca Tschaikner is an Austrian illustrator, printmaker, and storyteller with a nomadic spirit. Most of her books and artworks are inspired by her journeys to countries such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Malta, Italy, Jordan, and Spain. Traveling from matriarchal tribes in the jungle of India and on Sumatra to remote villages in the Mediterranean to the bazaars of Persia to the streets of Pakistani megacities, she likes to immerse herself for extended periods of time in the search of stories, images and atmospheres, with a special interest in microhistory, mythology and stories of everyday life.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Words by Bianca Tschaikner
I grew up in the Austrian Alps in a small town surrounded by mountains, forests, and rivers – a place of great beauty. But it always felt a bit narrow to me, and I dreamed of traveling.
After high school, I studied literature and media design in Austria and then after I completed my studies, I moved to Morocco. It was an intuitive choice – I was intrigued by the sensation of timelessness and of presence that I felt there. I found an atmosphere that brought me into a state of being in the present, which helped me to draw, to see, to be receptive, and to be in a flow. Years later I read Octavio Paz’s “In Light of India”, where he described how in the East one can find such an atmosphere because there, time is traditionally perceived as something circular – contrary to the Western world, where the sense of time is linear, always directed towards something, towards progress, towards a goal.
I think you can draw your inspiration from everything around you – I believe that everything can be inspiring to some extent – it’s mostly a matter of keeping yourself open. But I still do feel more inspired, more receptive in some places than in others, especially tending towards the East and the South. These are still the places I seek to work, because there it’s easy for me to be in the moment, to be in the flow. And there, I can create the best things.
One night traveling in the Marrakech Express, I was robbed, and my biggest loss amongst my robbed items was my sketchbook. I was destroyed. To console myself, I decided to make a new, even better sketchbook. And this was what you could call my first serious project – I was trying to observe and capture what was happening around me in that weird and fascinating city I was living in, Tangier, and this was the beginning of what I’m doing today, exploring the world with my sketchbook.
I think that studies can give you valuable knowledge, impulses, and perspectives, but I think that the best way to learn is just to go out and do things, to work in different circumstances, in different places, with different people, to work in workshops and on the streets. In school, you might learn a lot about technical stuff, but what fills your work with soul you can only learn outside, by yourself, following your intuition. In between and during these schools, I’ve lived and worked in different countries, doing artist residencies, working on my projects and on commissions. For me, learning, working and traveling are inseparably intertwined. I am a teacher now, but I will also always be a student. Learning new things for me is the most beautiful thing in life, curiosity is one of the most vital things there is.
I am an illustrator, printmaker and storyteller, and most of my work is inspired by my travels. This includes book projects, residencies, exhibitions, readings and workshops. In the last few years, I’ve worked in Indonesia, Malta, Iran, Pakistan, India, Spain, and Italy. Lately, I’ve become more and more interested in exploring villages – a village is like a cosmos on its own, and you can find the most interesting stories there. I always travel with an intention, but I prefer to let things develop out of circumstances. I feel that’s a more beautiful, natural, and interesting way of creating than meticulously planning. I’m not someone who does a lot of previous research before traveling, because it just ruins the magic of exploring and researching if you know too much. But I like to do a lot of reading afterward, which makes me relive my journey a second time.
Two years ago I stayed with the Khasi – a tribe in Meghalaya, North East India – for a month. They are a matrilineal and matrilocal society, which means that all property belongs to the women. Husbands move in with their wives after marriage and take the woman’s name. This was interesting enough, but what fascinated me the most about the Khasi was their extremely rich mythology and their folk tales. It’s a place deeply infused with myths and magic, there are sacred forests and mythical beings; everything is very much alive – people were telling me incredible stories, which I documented all in my book, MEGHALAYA. It’s a very remote, protected area – tourists aren’t allowed – and I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to dive into that world. After this, I really became interested in matriarchal cultures. Last year, I visited another fascinating matrilineal and matrilocal society: the Minangkabau in West Sumatra, Indonesia. I collected lots of stories there as well – my sketchbook from this journey will be published this fall.
My creative process really depends on what I’m doing – but usually, I jump right in. I almost never make sketches, because I feel it ruins the immediacy of the artwork, which is fundamental to me. There is a Picasso quote where he mentions Matisse repeating and trying to improve his sketches and how Picasso thinks that his first one is still always the best. I love working intuitively because I feel the most interesting things come out of it, and it’s also entertaining to see how images unfold.
As an artist, I think it helps to be aware of the fact that one is not a linear being, but a cyclical being. One that is not always the same, not always productive in the same way. In our culture, it’s all about linear productivity and constant results, which is absolutely contrary to nature, to human nature, and particularly to female nature. There is a time of inspiration, a time of rest, a time of sowing, and a time of harvest. I think this is something rather beautiful, and if you accept it and tune into that rhythm of production it can become something extremely powerful.
“As an artist, I think it helps to be aware of the fact that one is not a linear being, but a cyclical being.”
Creativity doesn’t always necessarily have to do something with output but is something taking place in the mind. It’s an interaction with your surroundings, a way to relate to the world, a way of seeing, of feeling, of being – no matter if this interaction leads to a visible result, or if it remains a thought that you play around with within your head and ultimately forget. It’s a state of mind which many of us have unlearnt, but it still offers itself to us all the time. An artwork is just a small window to this immense inner world some people – and not even so few, I think – carry within: It allows us a little insight into a marvelous and obscure world that exists there all the time, underneath all things.
As someone who likes to work as free as possible, self-discipline and structure are definitely challenging. I’m a bit of a workaholic – I could work in the printmaking studio all day – but there is also a lot of boring stuff that I don’t really like to do, and that asks for routine and consistency. That’s the part of my work that has nothing to do with creativity, but rather with managing the creativity – marketing, social media, presentations and applications, all this business stuff, taxes, and so on. What comes with being an artist can be tiring sometimes, but it’s necessary. Ultimately, I’m happy to have created this freedom for myself in my work and in my life; to have a lot of time and space to explore and to experience the beauty of the world.
COVID has definitely impacted my work – it forced me to come to a bit of a halt and look inside. I also started to write more, something which has always been important to me. I’d say that for me, personally, Covid has opened more doors than it has closed. In the year of the pandemic, I was spending a lot of time in Spain at Fundación CIEC, working on my project “The Far Province”. It’s a bit darker than my recent work – fantastic and poetic, working with images arising from the subconscious, and inspired by different mythologies like the Galician, Hellenistic, and Islamic. The Buraq, a mythological horse-like being with wings, is an image that came to me a lot, along with the Melusina, the two-tailed mermaid. It’s different from my recent works, which are mostly narrative pieces inspired by travels. This project is more about traveling internally. I don’t mind staying in one place so much – I love traveling, but I don’t depend on it. There is a lot of inspiration everywhere.
In the last year, I did lots of new things. I started to work with monotypes, I made large works for the first time, and I also started to do ceramics. I had begun work in a studio last fall, but then the lockdown came, so I ordered some clay and used the long, dark winter nights to do ceramics in the kitchen. I found a beautiful ceramic studio here in the Austrian Alps, so I decided to stay here over summer and experiment with porcelain, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’ve ordered black and white porcelain, along with golden glaze, and I’m currently waiting for all this to arrive – I can’t wait to embark on this new project.
To learn more about Bianca and her work, visit her website and her Instagram.