My research-based and action-led projects combine photography, video, and installation and explore the fraught formations of otherness, nationalist ideologies, xenophobia, and militarism, among the rest. I address sites, phenomena, myths, and events that reveal the anxieties and desires of communities, and try to unpack the conditions from which these feelings are bred as well as the mechanisms that propel them. With a background in theater and film, I apply theatrical procedures, using props, texts, characters, and choreography to create uncanny interventions and re-staging.
Willenz holds an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley (2019), and a BA from the Marc Rich Honors Program in the Humanities and the Arts, Tel Aviv University (2015, Dean’s honors). She has exhibited nationally and internationally in venues including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives; The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley; Heaven Gallery, Chicago; Root Division, SF; Dream Farm Commons, Oakland; The Wilfrid Israel Museum, Kibbutz Hazorea; The Givat Haviva Art Gallery; Nuzha Gallery, Jaffa; The Gvul Gallery, Hanita and The Joint Jewish-Arab Gallery, Kibbutz Cabri. In 2024 she opened a solo exhibition at The Gallery for Israeli Art at the Tivon Memorial Center, Kiryat Tivon, and in 2025 a solo exhibition at the Doug Adams Gallery at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, as well as a solo show at the Bar David Museum of Art and Judaica, Kibbutz Baram.
Willenz was artist-in-residence at The Lincoln Center Theater, NYC; Ox-Bow School of Art, Michigan; Atelier Shemi, Kibbutz Cabri; and Vermont Studio Center. She was a fellow at the Art and Research Center at UC Berkeley; and received grants from Asylum Arts; The Center for Arts and Religion at GTU, Berkeley; Jewish Arts Collaborative, Boston; Tel Aviv’s Art Department and Mifal HaPais. She won the Eisner Prize for Photography and the WORD prize from the American Jewish University, LA. In 2022 Willenz was a Creative Capitol Award finalist.