This video work, recorded in Rio de Janeiro, is highly related to Katie van Scherpenberg’s experiences of the Amazon River. The artist said the following about the river, “You could say that the river was, among other things, so much paint, for it contained a large quantity of pigments (ferrous oxides) from faraway places, and together with this paint it brought me a whole lot of information. In this sense, the river is somewhat like a painting. The Amazon was red”. The artist’s performance works usually involve the application of pigments onto the natural landscape, whether released into water, painted onto leaves, or placed onto sand or grass. In this sense she views them as ‘landscape paintings’. The title, Menarca, refers to the menarche – or the first menstrual cycle. This association brings into a different light the red (pigmented) water we see in the video and puts a new lens on her concerns of materiality, time, and nature. Alberto Saraiva wrote of Menarca, “Refusing the masculine environment, as she could never be part of it, she impregnates the world with her presence … By entering the sea waters, the red stain expands from her body, is absorbed in its nature, bleeding into the ocean”.