ABOUT AMANDA

Amanda Rybicka was born and bred in the City of Cape Town. She majored in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts and graduated in 2018. Amanda is inspired by the bizarre and grotesque; transforming seemingly unusual things into objects of art. Although Amanda majored in sculpture – her talents are wide and varied.

Amanda Rybicka addresses the topics of sexual assault, chronic illness and accessibility within a South African spectrum. She was a student representative of the disability service at the University of Cape Town and is dedicated to helping people feel that they are heard.

Her body of work has primarily been about invisible trauma and the effects it can have on individuals, she explores this partly by relating to her own personal experiences with trauma and how it has affected her childhood and early life – while also working with trauma survivors using creative methods of healing.

Amanda has done several performance pieces and sculptural installations conveying the physical manifestations trauma has on the body. Amanda is the co-founder of a collective art event that was held on the second Thursday of every month in observatory Cape Town called “OBviouZly ART”. OBviouZly ART focuses to bring up and coming artists to a space where they can sell and exhibit their work in a supportive and creative environment.

Amanda is an award-winning Cinematographer, she won best cinematographer and best over-all film in the UCT Shotties competition in 2017 for a film called “Zeroni”, and then the audience award and best runner up cinematographer in 2018 for a film called “Fever Dreaming”.

Amanda has also had special mentions for her prosthetic prop making on an award winning AFDA graduate film called “Chasm”. She worked on a short film called “Nomvula” which won various awards and was shown in international film festivals. Her job was to lead a team of three artists to make a full body creature suit using liquid latex, cast foam prosthetics and acrylic paint. The suit covered an actor from head to toe, transforming him into the creature that featured in the independent film “Nomvula”.