Büke Schwarz, born in Berlin, studied Visual Arts, Design and Film at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) and at the University of the Arts London (UAL). She received her degree from the UdK Berlin as a Meisterschülerin with Valérie Favre. On top of that she received her Master’s in Communications Design with a focus on sequential visual storytelling at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar (HBKsaar). In her works she frequently references art and politics, sweeping spectators away into narrative visual worlds in the process. At the same time, her characters also present interesting insights beyond standard norms and conventions. For her autofictional graphic novel Jein (Jaja Verlag, 2020), she received the Ginco Award for the best long-form comic. In 2021 she published the short-form comic Ludwig Meidner – Sehen Lernen in an anthology of comics titled Nächstes Jahr in – Comics und Episoden des jüdischen Lebens (Next Year in – Comics and Episodes of Jewish Life, Ventil Verlag, 2021). At the Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin she created the drawings for the play Streulicht, which supplemented the set as projections. That same year she received the Max Kade Writer-in-Residence fellowship, followed by a position teaching Creative Writing with a focus on visual storytelling at the Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. Her most recent projects have included works for the Yorck cinemas, the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art, and the Theatermuseum Düsseldorf.
