BETWEEN HEAVEN

YOU CAN’T GET MORE CREATIVE THAN VISUAL ARTIST, ARCHITECT, PHOTOGRAPHER AND MUSICIAN JINA NEBE. THE RICH TAPESTRY OF HER LIFE IS A CONSTANTLY UNFOLDING STORY OF INTRIGUE AND INSPIRATION

Words: SALLY DIXON

AS AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD child in Prague, Jina Nebe vividly remembers her art teacher instructing the class to paint a cherry tree in full blossom. “I started painting and I was acutely aware of the pleasure I felt,” she recalls fondly.

“My paternal grandfather was an amateur realist painter, and I loved the smell of oil paint, it was a scent that I found magical.” At that young age, Jina was charmed by the fact that something beautiful could be created out of nothing, that a blank canvas could be transformed into something to treasure.

Her love of art, and geometry, deepened at age 16 with the help of another art teacher, Czech surrealist painter Ladislav Motl, who was persecuted by the regime. “He taught me descriptive geometry, art history and explained to me how to draw perfect, soft, living lines,” she says. Family would also play an important part in shaping Jina’s creative side. The influence of two family members inspired the main artistic passions in her life, that of visual arts, thanks to her grandfather, and a love of music from her choir-singer father. “As the family tomboy, I always wanted to live several lives, to practice several professions and, therefore, to experience several identities.” And she did just that. At the age of ten, Jina took classical guitar lessons; at 18 she sang in a rock band; at 21 she was a founding member in the first female jazz trio of the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra in Prague and at 46 she created a musical show performed in Brussels, Prague, and Portugal.

Despite her affinity for music, Jina felt inspired to study architectural engineering when she realised that it was a discipline where you draw a lot and that while you were working you could listen to music! The perfect combo.

As an architecture student in Prague, Jina met French architect Guy Naizot during his visit to the city; that meeting led to a scholarship at the Paris-La Villette School of Architecture in France several years later. The scholarship opened doors for her to work on prestigious architectural projects in Paris and on the construction of transatlantic ships in Saint-Nazaire.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the change of political regimes in Central Europe, a job as director of technical cooperation programmes for the 11 Central European countries took Jina to Brussels, and subsequently as a quality assurance consultant to healthcare institutions in France, Belgium and Czech Republic.

Throughout her professional working life Jina held on to a perpetual curiosity for art and the natural world, a curiosity that would see her venture into many different mediums and journey through many different countries, documenting her travels along the way through art and photography.

Encounters in her early days with clandestine circles of artists, theorists and philosophers banned by the regime in former Czechoslovakia guided her towards alternative research and thinking. She says: “Since I have always worked in parallel in the two worlds of visual art and music, I have become an architect who draws, paints and makes music.” Thus, her multifaceted expression of creativity began to take shape.

Taking inspiration

As a young artist, Jina was strongly influenced by the art movements of the late 19th and early 20th century – Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, abstract art, and the work of artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich, Braque, Picasso, De Chirico, Moholy-Nagy, Ernst and Kupka, as well as the Bauhaus movement.

“These artists and movements had an impact then and still do today, on how I look at creation in a global way,” she says. “With the teachings of all these artists and schools, I don’t bother with formal questions about whether an image is figurative or abstract. These are categories that have no meaning for me.” and their elements as seen from above; meandering rivers, the crests of dunes, the twists and turns of roads, the geometric lines of the Algarve salt pans. “Whether the earth is shaped by human hands or by natural phenomena, I set out to capture its carnal and abstract force to make it visible in each of my creations,” she says with enthusiasm. “In the aerial views of the Chadian, Ethiopian and Iraqi deserts, I found the perfect, supple and lively lines that my teacher Ladislav Motl used to tell us about with passion.”

Since 1995 Jina has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions around the world, her first exhibition being at the age of 37. Jina’s work between 2012 and 2016 dealt with the insular, oceanic, climatic elements of the nature of island destinations including Mauritius, Rodrigues, Madagascar, Comoros, Lanzarote and Pico. Her depictions of cane fields in Mauritius are particularly mesmerising, with her aesthetically pleasing use of colour and pattern.

And in the here and now Fast-forward to today and Jina’s collaboration with Loulé Criativo is equally fascinating. At the beginning of 2020 she was accepted as isolation to researching different practices like ceramic making, textile printing, and cork-work through the internet. Jina’s handson approach to learning new skills has seen her create azulejos, ceramics and silk-screen printed textiles through collaborations with local factories, galleries and craftspeople. She reflects: “Throughout my life I have been lucky enough to make decisive encounters that have helped me to pursue and realise my dreams.”

I can only imagine that her private atelier in the hills outside Tavira is a hive of constant artistic activity!

The latest addition to her artistic repertoire is a collection of unique table textiles featuring original handmade embroidery inspired by her surroundings. Of course, she’s currently working on several other collaboration projects. One is with handmade azulejo production workshop, Aresta Viva, led by Rui and Maria Mascarenhas in Faro. Together they plan to launch a limitededition series of azulejos with drawings relating to the Algarve region, available to interior stores and souvenir shops. Another project in the making is the creation of ceramics with Alessa Dresel, owner of Studio Ayshek and fellow

For many years though, the main source of inspiration for Jina’s work has been the earth as seen from the sky, referenced from her own photography during countless aeroplane flights; flights that were part of her professional working life. The fact that her name, Nebe, means ‘heaven’ or ‘sky’ might have something to do with her fondness for being in the air. She laughs: “I know exactly where to sit on the plane now to get the perfect picture, not too close to the wing or the engine, very often between rows 23 and 25, and always a window seat!” As a self-confessed perpetual aisle seat traveller, I’m now feeling somewhat inspired to take the window seat on my next trip and see what Jina sees.

Her works carry the intimate imprint of the countries she has flown over, landscapes a designer in residence at Loulé Design Lab with her project Real Presences. Blurring the lines between art and design, her aim was to create prototypes of everyday objects and produce them in collaboration with Portuguese craftspeople and manufacturers. Jina uses linocut, drawing or painting to create from images captured during her air travel.

“I seek a new visual identity for the Portuguese nature and regions that inspire me — the meanders of the Ria Formosa, the geometry of the Algarve salt pans, the paths of Serra do Caldeirão or the erosion of the Azores islands,” she says.

As the start of her residency coincided with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, searching for fellow craftspeople to collaborate with became impossible and so she dedicated the resident at Loulé Design Lab.

On the photography side, an upcoming exhibition, À Fleur de Peau, in her home city of Prague is intended to convey the feeling she gets in the images she captures. “Whether it’s an aerial photograph of the earth or a photograph of sand at the water’s edge, or even a wall with a rough surface, it provokes a strong emotion in me that I want to convey on the medium, in the work. A kind of shocking, tactile ‘on the surface of the skin’, physical encounter.”

Married to a Portuguese poet and diplomat, with a base near Tavira, Jina is not one to give up travelling any time soon; as she poignantly points out: “Home is where you are”.

Jina’s original ceramic and textile works are available at the Loulé Criativo shop in Palácio Gama Lobo, 8100-259, Loulé.