NOA RY

_ARTIST NOA RY_
 

I was born in 1979 in Aargau, Switzerland, where I grew up in a commune. Today, I live and work in Zurich, Switzerland. My stepfather’s work with computers in the 1980s sparked my early interest in the relationship between humans and technology.

After attending art school at the age of 16, I earned a BA in Art and, at the age of 27, an MA in Cultural and Gender Studies at ZHdK in Zurich.

Living with schizoaffective disorder, I move through realities layered beyond the visible. I hear voices, see what others do not, and experience the world through distortions — colliding, splintering, and dissolving into a thousand fragments, much like identity itself. What may appear as rupture holds, at the same time, a hidden potential. Through persistence, I have come to recognise this multiplicity as a source — both fragile and powerful — of artistic creation.

I am drawn to breaking boundaries and making the invisible interfaces between worlds visible. My practice moves freely between robotic art, sculpture, sculptural painting, digital drawing, animation, video, and installation. For me, there are no fixed boundaries between analogue and digital, material and virtual. Circuit boards meet clay and silicone; hand-shaped forms merge with iPad drawings and digital software. I choose no single medium but follow the work wherever it leads — combining, transforming, and allowing one form to flow into another.

For example, I use face mapping technology to project my facial expressions onto sculptural paintings, bringing previously static works to life and transforming them into video art. Through this process, I merge with my work once again. My approach seeks to dissolve boundaries between formats, media, people, and society, while allowing myself to surrender to the process.

For more than thirty years, I have explored the space where the analogue meets the digital and technology merges with the human. At the age of 27, I developed the concept of the “DIVORG” — a dividing organism. It evolves from the idea of the “cyborg”, explored by Donna Haraway in *A Cyborg Manifesto* (1985): a cybernetic organism merged with the human, yet still an extension of the subject. For me, this concept no longer reflects the 21st century. The DIVORG goes further — an organism in constant motion, dividing, transforming, and adapting to survive in a fast-moving, information-driven world.

For me, there are no mistakes — what emerges from the subconscious is the soul of storytelling.

I embrace technology as an opportunity to approach the future with curiosity rather than fear. For me, art is the means through which I choose to confront this future.

I repeatedly ask myself: Who created whom? Where will our merging with technology take us? Is technology already becoming a new religion? Are we drowning in machines, or are we being reborn through them? What does the term “nature” mean today?

My art questions how technology shapes humanity, and in doing so, my creations become a mirror of the 21st century.