Tanya Rubbak

MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts, 2007
BA in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, 1997

Tanya Rubbak is a graphic designer based in Los Angeles working on publication, identity, web, and exhibition design with collaborators ranging from cultural to commercial.
 
With a literature background and poetry practice, much of her current independent work studies contemporary online and physical cultural landscapes through the lens of language and design. 

Previous collaborative projects focused on parallels between design and performance through projects like Signigy, Sanctify, Believe, which looked at connections between art and religion through performance and publishing, and a cross-disciplinary design/performance/publishing project NS Journal with Brian Getnick, culminating in a book, Final Transmission: Performance Art and AIDS in Los Angeles. In 2019 she co-curated with Nora Beckman of Days LA, Communication by Seduction Project (Windows, Real or Imagined), a multi-part risograph print edition in which designers and artists created windows into hidden structures where desires live.

She's interested in the transformative and liberating potential of improvisation, humor, play, and a form-first, referential approach to narrative and style. Current research covers diasporic identities and Soviet nostalgia, virtualization of reality, hauntology, hyper online aesthetics and politics, pop and human connection, and artificial intelligence characterization in literature and film.