Patricia Olynyk’s prints, photographs, and video installations investigate science and technology related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of science, human life, and the natural world. Working across disciplines to develop “third culture” projects, she frequently collaborates with scientists, humanists, and technology specialists. Her multimedia environments call upon the viewer to expand their awareness of the worlds they inhabit—whether those worlds are their own bodies or the spaces that surround them.

Patricia Olynyk is an artist, writer, and educator whose work explores science and technology-related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of our place in the world. Her areas of research are broad and range from the affective qualities of immersive spaces and embodiment to speculative storytelling and expanded cinema. Her work has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally, at: The Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts; Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne, Venice; the Los Angeles International Biennial; The Brooklyn Museum; the Saitama Modern Art Museum, Japan; and Museo del Corso, Rome. Her solo exhibitions include: Sensing Terrains at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington; Dark Skies at the Art | Sci Center Gallery at UCLA; and Transfigurations at Galeria Grafica, Tokyo, Japan. Other exhibitions include: Skeptical Inquirers at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York; Sleuthing the Mind at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; and Interplanetary VR Sustainable Futures, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria. She is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including a Helmut S. Stern Fellowship at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities; a Francis C. Wood Fellowship at the College of Physicians, Philadelphia; and a research fellowship at the Narrenturm in Vienna.

For fourteen years, Olynyk has co-chaired the LASER Talks program in New York, an affiliate of Leonardo/International Society of Art, Science, and Technology, which promotes cross-disciplinary exchange between artists, scientists, humanists, and technologists. In 2020, she was appointed the inaugural Medicine + Media Arts Fellow at UCLA’s Art | Sci Center. Her writing has been featured in publications that include Public Journal (York University), the Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture, Technoetic Arts (Intellect Press), Leonardo Journal, the Angewandte Book Series (DeGruyter), and Bio/Matter/Techno Synthetics (Actar Press). Before joining Washington University’s College and Graduate School of Art as the Florence and Frank Bush Professor in Art, Olynyk was part of the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, where she was the first non-scientist appointed to the university’s renowned Life Sciences Institute. Her MFA degree with Distinction was earned from the California College of the Arts before she received the prestigious Monbusho Scholarship and Tokyu Foundation Research Scholarship for arts-based research in Japan.