From her studio in the Rotterdam harbour area, Charlotte Schleiffert works on her 'nature drawings'. Books, paint pots, magazines, and crayons are dangling everywhere. During spring, this workspace is filled with cuttings, which she plants in her own garden. A messy, green studio is stimulating for Schleiffert. It is the place where she created more than thirty works on paper and paintings for her first solo exhibition, ‘NATURECULTURES’ at ROOF-A in Rotterdam.
Schleiffert's new works embody a longing for a different world. Her anger over abuse of power, injustice, and hypocrisy set her to work. Spread across two floors at ROOF-A, we see, among other things, scenes of migrants on the run, the shipping of toxic Western waste to Africa, and surveillance practices in the former GDR. These works are a search for a livable place in an unsafe world. Anyone expecting heavy and dark works is wrong. Schleiffert's paintings are anything but gloomy: using bright colours and dreamy figures, she manages to capture the complexity of our times in a light-hearted way.
Charlotte Schleiffert’s exhibition ‘NATURECULTURES’ is on view until March 15 at ROOF-A in Rotterdam.
You once said: “I create my own world in my studio.” Take us there, where is your studio and what does that world look like to you?
My studio is in the M4H harbour area in Rotterdam. I create my world in the studio by having books around me, which I often supplement with books borrowed from the library. When I have an idea for a work, I try to find as many books on the subject as I can and go through all my torn-out pages from magazines to compile an image. My studio is full of books and cut-outs, and when I start a work, it's soon filled with paint pots and various chalks and boxes around me. My studio is quite messy. During spring, it is full of cuttings, which I plant in my own garden.
Do you work with a specific routine in your studio, such as rituals or habits that help you get started?
I don’t have specific rituals or habits that help me get going. I just sit down first, look around, and then continue with what I was working on. Sometimes I think about what I want to create and look for these images. Often, in the afternoon, I sit down in a comfortable chair by the window, look outside, read a comic book, or browse a plant book.
How do you choose your materials, do you choose them spontaneously or do you purposefully seek for them? Did you use special materials for your solo exhibition at ROOF-A?
I work with different types of adhesive film, I have been working with those for years, and I have several rolls of them in my studio. In my latest paintings, I mainly use paint. In one large painting, currently on show int the exhibition, there are some places where glitter film has been incorporated. The smaller paintings are collaged with cut-out painted figures.
Congratulations on your first solo exhibition at ROOF-A and winning the ROOF-A Art Award 2025. In this exhibition, you attempt to create a less anthropocentric worldview. Could you explain this? What necessity did you feel to address this theme? And what would such a world look like?
In the past, my work was mainly focused on humans and human relationships. Around 2010, I began making small nature drawings. These are drawings in which I imagine an ideal world to live in. There are usually just one or two people surrounded by beautiful flowers and insects. Recently, I have been making larger works that focus on the living environment. This specifically concerns the relationship between humans and nature. I love flowers, plants, insects, and amphibians. I fantasize about a world with only them. It’s also a call for everyone to treat our world better. Due to climate change, so many animal species are disappearing, and there are so many natural disasters. The women in my works are their loved ones and their guardian angels.
In your new works, we again see animal figures. This is a recurring theme in your work. Can you tell us where this fascination with animals comes from?
I’ve loved birds my entire life, and when I’m walking or working in my garden, I’m so happy when I encounter a frog or see insects flying around. I find them so beautiful. Their beauty fascinates me, and it inspires me to draw and paint them. It just makes me really happy!
In contrast to earlier works, you’ve now chosen to leave out textual quotes. What is the reason for this change? And how do you want to convey your message without these words?
In my previous works that included text, the themes were often about harrowing situations people were facing. They were very intense topics, such as rape, mutilation, femicide... I added text because I thought it was important for these themes to come across clearly. Now, when I paint about war, I make sure that it can be seen in the painted image, so there is more space for personal interpretation. In my earlier works, the texts came from newspaper articles. They were the starting point for my work. Now, I follow the news journal and I paint my own image based on it.
Both in your dreamy nature drawings and in your politically charged paintings, female figures dominate. Who are the women in your work, like the woman living in an orchid or the woman in boots with a floral coat?
The women in my drawings are inspired by models from magazines. This is an easy way for me to draw a female body. Their poses are often provocative or self-assured: that's what I’m looking for in my work. They are drawn from reality, but they are also unfamiliar women to me. It’s about what I want to express, but how I draw or paint the models often looks nothing like the woman in the magazine. It’s more about seeing how a body is structured. A real person becomes more like a fictional person radiating power. The women in my drawings are often composed of different photos of women. Sometimes with a mask as a head, sometimes with the head of a bird. These fictional characters feel “lifelike” to me, like someone you could run into.
You dream of exhibiting your work internationally. Are there specific countries where your art and ideas need to be seen and heard?
I do not have a specific country in mind. I would just like more people to get to know my work.
What are you currently working on? Are you involved in a new project or do you have plans for the future that you’re already excited about?
Right now, I’m working on pieces for a solo exhibition at Museum Weert, which will take place at the end of 2025.