Olena Newkryta is a visual artist based in Vienna. Rooted in moving images and multi-media installations, her research-based practice investigates the material, historical, socio-political, and emotional dimensions of the techno-social environment we inhabit – addressing specifically the incorporation of human labour in technological infrastructures. Inspired by techno-feminist perspectives and the emancipatory potential of communal practice, Olena seeks to unravel hegemonic narratives and open realms of seeing otherwise.

Olena studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna as well as at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and was an artist in residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions and screenings, including WRO Media Art Biennale Wrocław, EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Wien Vienna, Duisburger Filmwoche, Singapore International Film Festival, Kyiv International Short Film Festival, Filmmuseum Wien Vienna, Kunsthaus Graz, Kunstraum Lakeside Klagenfurt, Central Museum of Textiles Łódź, A Tale of A Tub Rotterdam. 

Most recently, Olena’s work has been awarded the joined production residency “Afterlife” by Sonic Acts, Amsterdam and Rupert, Vilnius (2026), the Pixel, Bytes + Film scholarship (2025), the Outstanding Artist Award for Media Arts (2024), the Price of the City Duisburg for the Best Short and Middle Length Documentary Film (2023).

During her residency, Olena Newkryta will start working on a short film that explores how mental health is affected by digital technologies and exhaustive systems of data extraction. The work will connect present-day mental health technologies to longer histories of psychiatry and computation and asks how these histories continue to shape both digital systems and emotional experiences. Using a mix of documentary and speculative methods, the film reimagines spaces where these dynamics come into focus, from clinical environments to software systems. Ultimately, the project examines how alternative, collective models of support might offer resistance to the individualising logic of current mental health systems.

Olena Newkryta’s Alterlife residency is a partnership between Rupert and Sonic Acts, Amsterdam. Alterlife is a project of Re–Imagine Europe: New Perspectives for Action, and funded by the European Union.

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Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (ECEA). Neither the European Union nor the ECEA can be held responsible for them.