Interview: Noa Ry
Luca Curci talks with Noa Ry during CANVAS INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2022, at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space and during RITUALS, first appointment of ANIMA MUNDI, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Born in Switzerland in 1979. At the age of sixteen, Noa Ry attended art school in Zurich and earned a bachelor’s degree in art. At twenty-seven Noa Ry got a master’s degree in cultural/gender studies at ZHDK Zurich. The artist works with any material. There are no boundaries for Noa Ry. The artist’s interest lies in the melting point between technology and human flesh. How the subject reacts, gets involved and merges. Noa Ry creates sculptures, 3D paintings, robotic art, animations, installations and video art. A look into the future is what’s important to the Artist. That’s why Noa Ry invented the term DIVORG – a dividing organism. From a cultural study perspective, the DIVORG is the continuation of Donna Harraway’s theory of the “cyborg”. Noa Ry believes there is a need for a new term for the human species of the 21st century. “Because we are not controlled by technology anymore, but have merged with it”, Noa Ry says. “And so have our identities. Boundaries have washed away and identities have mixed. We have to be able to divide to survive in this fast and loaded world of information. “We have to be a DIVORG – a dividing organism.” In Noa Ry’s more recent works, the artist has continued to draw the possibilities of merging “analogue” and “digital” by animating existing 3D pictures, sculptures and newly drawn sketches. This is deliberately only done with the iPhone as a tool, which has become indispensable in the western world.

Luca Curci – What are you currently working on?
Noa Ry – At the moment I’m working on one of my biggest 3D Paintings. The dimensions are 140x100cm. I work with new techniques for me, where oxidation is the main focus. The picture is called “erosion”. The process of creation is a process of time in which I as an artist myself threaten to be eroded.

LC – How did you get to your current artistic practice?
NR – This is a long way. An artist is not born from a miracle. The artist grows, develops, and changes again, only to reinvent itself in the end. After twenty years of creating art, I experience how all the knowledge, techniques, tools and software now flow together into a new form of expression.

LC – Where do you find your inspiration?
NR – The inspiration is in my brain. I have a schizo-affective disorder. I hear voices in my head, I see things that others don’t see. This is a curse on the one hand, but the blessing comes after hard work. Today I see this great dimensionality as a great artistic enrichment. In addition, since I was a teenager I have been interested in the question of the merging of technology and flesh. The pulling of the rope between the “inside” and the “outside”, the power that arises through the struggle of identities, that’s where my inspiration lies.

LC – How do you feel when you see your work completed?
NR – I mostly feel empty. Like sitting across from a stranger. The work, although I gave “birth” to it, when it is finished has an identity of its own. I look at a part of myself, maybe try to recognize myself in it, because a finished work always carries the message of the subconscious. An invitation, a death certificate, a handshake. But I can also just turn around and say goodbye. I am not emotionally connected to my art but to the journey that leads me to my works. However dark and impenetrable it may seem, when I see the completed picture, I know I’ve survived once again.

LC – Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
NR – My video “DIVORG – a dividing organism” is a unique perspective on how to bring movement into stillness. The origin of each animation is a sculpture or 3D painting I create. The progression to animation breathes life into the works waking up to arguments, contemplation, screaming for mother or to looking at each other straight in the face. As a spectator, one experiences a newly won intimacy with the creatures that are now alive, an insight into their private moment. DIVORCE is the fusion of “analogue” and “digital”. Through the movement animation of the individuals, which I animate with my own face and thus transport, even I as an artist penetrate my art, into the depths of the total fusion of art and artist, technology and human flesh.

LC – What do you think about the organization of our event?
NR – I think Itsliquid group is a unique platform that brings together artists from all over the world. It gives opportunities where many artists can’t find them anymore. It gives me and others the opportunity to present the works and this on breathtaking premises.