BIO
Hilary Wilder is a visual artist who works primarily in painting, and also in sculpture and installation. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and two Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowships. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Suburban (Oak Park, Illinois), Open Satellite (Seattle), the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and Devin Borden Gallery (Houston), and in numerous group exhibitions in the US and abroad at venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, Massachusetts).
In her 2019 exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, They Bring Flowers, the paintings are based on narratives that are drawn from a range of sources and disciplines — among them the history of 20th-century architecture, including the unwanted modifications by Le Corbusier to a home designed by Eileen Gray, and the unsolicited design by Adolf Loos of a house for Josephine Baker; the story of Penelope and her suitors from the Odyssey, and the painting of this subject by J.W. Waterhouse; a historical account of a woman in Congleton, England who was publicly humiliated by churchwardens for criticizing their practices; and the story of Violet Gibson, who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926. At the center of each of these is an encounter between a woman and a specific system or individual that aims to diminish her; the works reflect upon the complexities of these narratives, and to whom they belong.
Wilder lives and works in Richmond, Virginia, where she is an Associate Professor in Painting at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.