Sylvia Schwenk was born in Mannheim, 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. Schwenk shows us worlds we want to live in. She also presents the everyday with new perspectives for us to experience and consider. Sometimes Schwenk creates works of socially engaged performance art with tens or hundreds of people that emphasize collaboration, fun, dialogue and audience activation. She works closely with communities to explore local issues, creating artworks that are both context-responsive and universal in their presentation. Other times she captures moments, spaces or actions with paintings, films, drawings, sculptures or by writing a book. Whatever the medium, themes of community and communication run through her works, which unite art and social considerations.
Schwenk’s art addresses the need for equality and compassion in our social lives. Her projects translate her abiding concerns into artworks where viewers are invited to experience, in both emotional and conceptual ways, what it means to seek real change in themselves and in their communities. Her works encourage a dynamic awareness of what it means to pursue mutual recognition and ongoing transformation. Schwenk’s artistic practice is marked by care, generosity, and resolve. Her work offers pleasures and intrigues of its own, even while it opens up a common ground where we can envision new possibilities.
Schwenk performs and exhibits in art galleries, film festivals and communal spaces internationally. In the last 10 years 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. 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. 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.
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’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.
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.