This portrait depicts Fleur Jaeggy (b. 1940), a writer of Swiss origin. The artist first encountered her through the book Impossible Lives. She felt a profound connection and a shared perception of the world with the writer: a sense of fantasy, digressiveness, and a subversive way of treating the important as unimportant, and vice versa.

Jaeggy is portrayed in a dark jacket with a black hole in the lapel—a symbol of the matrix, but also of the “memory of space”—the all-creating void. The writer’s hair is impeccably styled, which may symbolize her so-called “good breeding,” yet it also points to a discipline of thought (hair as an emanation of the human spirit and vital force). It may also evoke the image of a knight’s helmet.

Meandering lines float above the writer’s head, interwoven with the words: “she knows words well.” From the heart-eye on her right side emerge rays that merge with those coming from the left side of the painting. The rays meet within Fleur. The artist has depicted her with her arms folded across her chest, symbolizing “doing nothing”—the Taoist principle of wu wei, or action through inaction, as the essence of remaining within the creative space.

Technique, dimension: oil on canvas, 130 × 110 cm

First showing: 2026, Alina Foundation

Ownership: Monika Waraxa