NOA RY

_ARTIST NOA RY_
 

She was born in 1979 and grew up in a small town in the Swiss canton of Aargau, living in a commune with her extended family. Her Step-father’s early work with computers inspired her interest in the relationship between humans and technology. At 16, she attended art school in Zurich, where she still lives today. She completed a Bachelor of Arts at 20 and a Master’s degree in Cultural and Gender Studies at the ZHdK Zurich at 27, which profoundly shaped her worldview.

 

Living with schizoaffective disorder, she hears voices and perceives distortions others do not. What feels like chaos can also become artistic energy. Art helps her cope with her illness, transforming inner tension and fragmented perceptions into tangible works. The constant struggle between inside and outside, and between multiple identities, fuels her creativity.

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At the core of her work lies the interplay between humans and technology and their impact on identity. She works with computer circuit boards pieces, ceramics, silicon, as well as digital media and iPad drawings, blurring the boundaries between analogue and digital. Her work includes robotic art, sculptures,sculpture-paintings, digital artworks, animations, videos and installations. Using FaceTime mapping, she projects her facial expressions onto sculptural and digital paintings, animating them and transforming static pieces into video art, breathing life into them. In doing so, she merges with her own work and becomes art herself. Through this process, she explores the dissolution of boundaries between formats, media, and people.

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For over 30 years, she has examined how humans and technology merge, focusing on breaking down barriers and exposing interfaces. At 27, she developed the concept of the “DIVORG” – a dividing organism – as an evolution of Donna Haraway’s “cyborg Manifesto”. Unlike the controlled cyborg, the DIVORG must remain in motion to survive in today’s fast-paced, data-driven world.

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She sees technology as a chance to face the future with curiosity rather than fear.

Art, for her, is the ideal medium to explore questions such as: Who created whom? Where will our merging with technology lead? Is technology becoming a new religion? Are we drowning in machines or reborn from them? In this sense, her art becomes a mirror of the 21st century.