Lily Díaz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and in Puerto Rico. She has a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from Brandeis University, and is a graduate of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Lily Díaz works with the language and with images. Her interests focus on the areas of history, myth and representation.
In 1985, as artist-in-residence at the Museum of Holography in New York City, she produced a holographic installation piece, A Tribute to Spiderman. During 1987, as part of a residency at Film/Video Arts (New York City), she created Afterimages, a VideoPoem. The video uses poetry to produce an impression of the bilingual/bicultural mind. The piece has been exhibited widely and is part of the anthology Latin American Video during the Eighties of the Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, in Madrid, Spain.
She received a Fulbright fellowship for 1990-91, to conduct research for A Simultaneous View of History, an interactive piece about science in 16th Century America and Spain. This work investigates scientific techniques utilized by the Europeans to visualize the newly acquired lands.
In 1994, she was commisioned by the Arts Festival of Atlanta to create @rt Auction an interactive computer art piece that explores the topic of how price informs our perception of art.
She has taught at the Pratt Institute of Design in Manhattan, the Universidad de Guadalajara in México, and has lectured in Finland, Puerto Rico, Spain and the United States. She has also researched and published work on the subject of Pictorial Space in Computer Art and most recently received a Young Researcher's award from the Center for International Mobility (CIMO) in Finland. Currently she is pursuing post-doctoral studies at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland.
Email: diaz@uiah.fi