Inga Prasse

Painting and participatory art projects | Lübeck

Inga Prasse paints photorealistic portraits in oil and pastel – people and animals, mostly in the moment when they are not trying to present anything.

Alongside this, she develops participatory projects on the Baltic coast in which painting leaves the confines of the picture: a ten-metre underwater panorama created by more than 400 people. Twelve flags on the Nordermole pier, designed by children from four Lübeck schools. A children’s book about the state of the Baltic Sea, illustrated together with nine children.

Both strands revolve around the same question: how closely do we actually look – at a face, at a sea?

Areas of Work

Oil Portraits

Large-format oil paintings, mostly of children and young people. At their centre is the unselfconscious gaze – the moment before someone knows they are being looked at.

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Pastel

Works in pastel, including the series Human Nature (since 2022). The medium allows a closeness to skin and fur that comes about differently in oil.

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Art Projects

Site-specific projects spanning painting, illustration, animation and literature, often developed together with children and young people. Supported by the Possehl Foundation and the Dräger Foundation, among others.

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Selected Projects

Abgetaucht – Mission Ostsee (Diving Down – Mission Baltic Sea)

2024 | Children’s book and illustration project

Illustrated together with nine children, funded by the Possehl Foundation’s Kulturfunke* programme and awarded the Bürgerakademie Lübeck Prize 2024. Two children find a message in a bottle and dive into a Baltic Sea that is not doing well.

FahnenMeer (Sea of Flags)

2023 | Twelve flags, Nordermole pier, Travemünde

Together with children and young people from four Lübeck schools, twelve flags were created on the themes of Lübeck, Travemünde and the Baltic Sea. They were raised on the Nordermole pier in summer 2023. A project of the Verein für Kunst und Kultur zu Travemünde e. V. (Travemünde Art and Culture Association), funded by the Dräger Foundation.

Underwater Walk in the Baltic Sea

2022 | 2 × 10 m, public painting event

Over the course of a month, a ten-metre panorama of the Baltic Sea’s underwater world took shape: native marine life, with litter in between. More than 400 children and adults took part. Funded by the Possehl Foundation’s Kulturfunke* programme.

The Mask in the Sea

2021 | Public painting event and painting sponsorships

For three months, Inga Prasse worked publicly on a painting on the beach promenade and in front of the Ostseestation Travemünde: a lion’s mane jellyfish next to a used disposable face mask. Beside it were signs showing how long everyday objects take to break down – the jellyfish stays in the sea for one year, the mask for 450.

41 sponsors supported the work with a total of 1,150 euros, all of which went to the Ostseestation Travemünde. The painting was shown at the Museum für Natur und Umwelt Lübeck (Museum of Nature and Environment) in the exhibition Von Flüssen und Meer (Of Rivers and Sea).