About
I’m Sylwia Orczykowska, a post-disciplinary designer, curator, philosopher, and dancer. My practice unfolds at the intersection of communication, design, art, science, and embodied movement, with a focus on Deep Ecology and relational dynamics. Originally from Poland, I’m based in Zurich, Switzerland.
My work is rooted in environmental philosophy and the integration of cognitive and embodied ways of knowing through art-science inquiry. Drawing on a variety of verbal and non-verbal languages, I explore the potential of bringing together research, art, tacit knowledge, embodied perception, lived experience, and other-than-human perspectives.
Meandering through the grassy fields during a biosonification-based art performance by Modern Biology. Rieterpark, Zurich, May 2026.
With my deep interest in semantics, I approach meaning as a dynamic structure that shapes experience, perception, and relationships between people, places, objects, and narratives. I explore settings in which artistic, social, cultural, and personal contexts can be brought together to reveal their hidden tensions, potentials and new forms of understanding.
This direction eventually led me to found Art Now, a post-disciplinary research lab for artistic, curatorial, and experiential formats exploring how human perception, beliefs, and habits influence the ways of participating in the living world. Here, I create spaces for interspecies care, ecological imagination, and more attentive forms of inhabiting our shared planet.
Before initiating Art Now, I worked across advertising, marketing, and communication, developing a critical understanding of attention, language, image-making, and the construction of cultural narratives. My current artistic and curatorial work transforms this knowledge into practices that move from persuasion toward inspiration, from capturing attention toward deeper attention and one’s own capacity to respond.
I also actively engage with Systemic Design Labs at ETH Zurich and the partnering MonViso Institute, contributing to art-science integration and multispecies communication through co-teaching, mentoring, curating, and the development of experiential formats at the intersection of ecological research, artistic practice, and embodied learning.
For several years, I have been practising modern, contemporary, and Broadway jazz, pursuing my lifelong passion for dance. A turning point came with my discovery and intensive practice of contact improvisation and physical theatre, which shaped my understanding of the body as a site of perception, relation, and collective wisdom. Recognising the life force within the body continues to guide my work through processes of individual and societal transformation.
Started years ago without expectations, yoga has become a vital part of my mornings, grounding strong body–mind foundations and a deepened sense of being and becoming.