Marcella Höchstetter (1987, Gauting) is an artist who lives and works in Northern Bavaria. Her practice centres on body prints made with tempera, watercolours, and natural pigments on unstretched canvas, reflecting on female empowerment, embodied memory, and self-affirmation.

Raised in a matrilineal environment, Höchstetter developed an intuitive relationship with her body, which was recently intensified by the homebirth of her son. This transformative experience is closely tied to another pivotal influence. She witnessed her mother’s painful and isolating struggle with menopause. Confronting this trauma made her realise how many women enter the second half of life feeling disconnected and diminished. Höchstetter’s work seeks to offer an alternative of affirmation, visibility, and strength. She aims to empower women to reclaim their bodies and stories so that neither they, their daughters, nor their partners feel as lost as her mother once did.

Her focus on embodiment is also rooted in her diagnosis with Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease. This was a turning point that coincided with leaving her homeland, ending a long-term relationship, and living alone for the first time. Having let go of everything once stored at her parents’ home, she entered a chapter that allowed her to discover a new way of eating that gently brought her symptoms into balance. This healing process deepened her bodily intuition and reaffirmed her commitment to listening inwardly.

Her practice is thus shaped by past wounds and future hopes, fusing personal transformation with a broader commitment to care.

Höchstetter’s process is tactile and instinctive. She allows the canvas to interact with environmental elements such as sun, wind, trees prior to stretching it. Working directly with her hands and body, she then applies generous layers of pigment before imprinting herself onto canvas. This living quality reflects the complexity and transformation inherent in women’s lives. Her work often includes embedded mantras, personal textiles, or scented elements, turning each canvas into an ephemeral monument of resilience and change. Language and storytelling, which are also integral to her background as a teacher, appear to be embedded in her works through wordplay, handwritten text, and playful references to grammar and humor.

Beyond self-representation, Höchstetter co-creates body prints with other women via a process of deep listening and care. Conceived as a collaborative rite of passage, each work is a marker of survival, strength or transition, intended to anchor women within their new chapters of life.