Bio

Rachele Riley (born in Washington, DC) is an artist, graphic designer, and design educator based in Durham, NC, USA. She is passionate about typography, image making, and data/language research; and develops these interests as modes for personal, cultural, and artist-citizen engagement. Her multi-faceted research-based work explores the relationships between place, change, and conflict; and explores the histories and material systems of archives. Her work takes diverse inspiration from natural and built phenomena, poetics, and movement—into her letter forms design, visual mappings, and interactive imaging.

She has presented, published, and exhibited her work in national and international settings—at Artist Replete Gallery in Chicago, IL (2024); at 1708 Gallery’s InLight21 in Richmond, VA (2021); at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York (2019); the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, NC (2018); the Baltic Centre in Gateshead, UK (2013); and at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Canada (2014), among other venues. Her project, The Evolution of Silence (launched 2013), which explores the impact of forty-one years of post-WWII nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, was named an Official Honoree in NetArt by The Webby Awards (2014) and also recognized by AIGA Philadelphia Design Awards (2017), and is included in the exhibition and book, Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural (Actar Publisher, 2022). Her design work has been recognized by Communication Arts Magazine (Typography Annual) (2018), Print Magazine’s Design Regional (2008), and is featured in the book, Motion Design (Woolman, 2004). She works collaboratively with Daniel McCafferty and Joshua Singer as part of Different Data, a project that explores design ecologies in cities. She served on the Board of Directors for DesignInquiry from 2013–2015—co-framing the DI:DesignCity research gathering in Detroit, MI in 2014. 

Rachele holds a MFA in Design/Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Vordiplom in Communication Design from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, Germany, and a BS in Studio Art from New York University. She has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of North Carolina Charlotte, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and is currently Associate Professor of New Media and Design at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.