Born in Mannheim, Sylvia grew up in Australia and now lives in Berlin. She is a multidisciplinary artist who uncovers relationships between the body and the everyday. For Schwenk, art is about possibilities. Her works have a sense of play and accessibility that engenders a different way of looking at things. She presents the everyday with new perspectives for us to experience and consider.
For more than two decades Sylvia has worked across media and across scales, from public and institutional settings to the studio, always choosing the medium that best serves the idea. Moving between forms shapes her attention to context and composition and helps her develop visual languages that are both rigorous and openended.
Sylvia performs and exhibits in art galleries, film festivals and communal spaces internationally. She has created more than 30 works of socially engaged and community projects. Over 2,000 people have participated in these works using their bodies to realise the art, in everyday situations and spaces including public areas, prisons, naval bases, cathedrals, football grand finals, public transport, model airplane fields and art institutions.
Her art is in many public collections including Museum für Sepulkralkultur, in Kassel, DE, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, Gold Coast City Art Gallery AU, as well as Stanford University in California in the USA. Schwenk received a PhD from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and studied at KISD in Cologne, and the Universität der Kunst in Berlin.
Selected solo exhibitions include Artereal Gallery, Sydney, oqbo project space, Berlin, dianne tanzer gallery + projects, Melbourne, Dynamo Expo, Enschede, and Perron 1, Delden, NL. Selected group exhibitions include Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Lincoln Arts Project, Massachusetts. Some of her commissions of socially engaged performance art include the Royal Australian Navy, Kunstwerkstatt an der Turmstraße, Stadt Monheim am Rhein, Kultursekretariat NRW Gütersloh, the INTERREG – Grenzregionen gestalten Europa Europäischer Fonds für Regionale Entwicklung der Europäischen Union, Art Fairs (Sydney and Melbourne), and Art Month.
Schwenk’s artist residencies include Kunstwerkstatt an der Turmstraße, Stadt Monheim am Rhein, the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, DE, aadk Blanca, ES, the Academy of the Arts, University of Tasmania, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, HMAS Penguin, Sydney, AU, and albb Saigon, VT.