Hyla Willis

Hyla Willis is a founding member of subRosa, a feminist art collective.

She was born in Yuba City, California, and lived in Northern California and Seattle, Washington for many years. Willis has exhibited, performed and held workshops in Europe, Asia, Australia and throughout North America. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts 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.

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. In 2014, she 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 has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from:

• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
• Creative Capital
• MacDowell Colony Fellowship
• Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council

2014

• Pittsburgh Artist of the Year solo exhibition, America's Least Livable City, and other works, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

2013

• A Body of Work: Landscaping Social Practice, Bruce Gallery, Edinboro University, PA
• Collective Action Archive, The Passage Gallery, SUNY Purchase, NY
• Working Alternatives: Breaking Bread, Art Broadcasting, and Collective Action, Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT
• Healthy Artists Movie Poster Exhibition, Modern Formations Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA

2012

• Selected What’s Up Pittsburgh?, Clarion University Gallery, Clarion, PA

2011

• Pittsburgh Biennial, The Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
• Sites of Passage, The Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, PA