Zuzanna Karczewska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and came to the United States to study architecture at New Jersey Institute of Technology and later at Cornell University.  She has worked for various New York City practices.  She is currently an associate professor in the School of Architecture at Montana State University.

She has a continuing interest in representation and its relation to philosophical enquiry.  Over the last decade she has worked with felt, graphite, charcoal, and later watercolor.  Her work is concerned with local places and materials and the passage of the time, as well as reaching for an understanding of how we encounter the world.