Hyla Willis is an American artist. She is a founding member of subRosa, a feminist art collective and teaches media arts at Robert Morris University. In her work and teaching, Willis uses the cultural and political economies of graphic design, creative experimentation, and acoustic ecology.

Early life and education

Willis was born in Yuba City, California, and lived in Northern California and Seattle, Washington for many years. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts.

Hyla Willis

Career

Willis has exhibited, performed and held workshops in Europe, Asia, Australia and throughout North America. Along with Faith Wilding, Willis has been a core member of subRosa. While subRosa started with a feminist critique of art and marketing it's performative and transdisciplinary practice has expanded to include biotech and bio-political feminist issues. In 2002, they won a Creative Capital grant in Emerging Fields.

Hyla Willis

In 2014, Willis was named Artist of the Year by Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Her show, titled “America’s Least Livable City and Other Works" referenced the famous ranking in 1985 when Pittsburgh was named America’s most livable city by Rand McNally, while her hometown, Yuba City, Calif., was ranked least livable city on the same list. In 2014, she was a participant in Sites of Passage: Borders, Walls & Citizenship, a cultural exchange between artists from Israel, Palestine and the U.S.

Hyla Willis

References

External links

Hyla Willis

Living people

Carnegie Mellon University alumni

Cornish College of the Arts alumni

Artists from Pittsburgh

People from Yuba City, California

Robert Morris University faculty

Year of birth missing (living people)