BIO

Lali Wilde, born Ola’i Manu Mele Isabella Wildeboar, came into this world at the same moment an earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area. 

Her earliest memories are of doing performances with her aerialist and yogi mom in the Mystic Family Circus, and playing in the tour bus of her guitarist father’s bands as they drove around the country. By the time she was ten, she had performed at major festivals along the west coast, including Burningman, Lightning in a Bottle, Symbiosis, Outside Lands, and more. These formative years showed her the life of an artist close up: a life where reality and fantasy were always intertwined. 

Throughout these childhood years she created works of her own: songs, characters, stories and more, steadily perfecting her skills in musicianship, visual arts, and the performing arts. In middle school she began honing her craft more diligently, playing trombone in a jazz band and performing in musical theater productions. In eighth grade she enrolled in Oakland School for the Arts where she studied Vocal Music for two years and Literary Arts for three.

At age 15 her father taught her how to use Ableton Live, and she recorded and self-produced her first album of original songs. At age 17, she wrote and self-published her first book, a choose-your-own-adventure novel with 9 different endings.

Her high school years also involved regular performances with her band, People Juice, several trophies with her slam poetry team, and multiple after school filmmaking, journalism, and media programs where she learned everything from professional camera operation, to using language to frame sensitive issues and encourage activist action. 

By the time she reached college, it was clear that her interests were far too varied for her to choose a major, so she decided on the experimental Hampshire College as her temporary home, and engaged in four years of studying a blend of performance art, music, filmmaking, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and social activism. She emerged from Hampshire having created a 9-week performance series and an album of original music. Her thesis work, made in addition to this artistic project, was  an in-depth study of extremism in social groups—religious, political, and interpersonal—and how it related to the power of artistry and leadership in performance.

After graduation, she began working independently with small businesses, offering services across copywriting, video editing, and social media management. This work quickly evolved, and soon she found that she was spending more time coaching and guiding others through their creative process rather than creating work for them. Her years of experience in many artistic circles, and her sustained interest in the psycho-socio power of language, made her a natural guide for others building visionary projects.

In the four years of doing this work, she has helped three clients write and publish their first books, and many others build social media followings, active email lists, websites, courses, rebrands, and more, all while simultaneously pursuing her own creative endeavors.

Since 2022 she has also worked closely with the cult fashion brand Emily the Strange. She has taken on many roles for this brand including brand advisor, strategic collaborator, licensing coordinator, design review, and content creator.

In 2023, she began collaborating with video artist John Sanborn on a series of augmented reality works titled “Out of Chaos”. The first edition of this work showed at the MEET Center in Milan, Italy in 2024, and the second showed at the Anita Beckers Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany in 2025. She has since collaborated on several other works with John, including an augmented reality Haunted House which exhibited in NYC on Halloween 2025.

In 2025 she was also commissioned by long running avant-garde group, The Residents, to create a stop motion clown themed music video for the song, “Dead Already”.

Most notably, however, is Lali Wilde’s work on her flagship project, “Captain Earthquake”, a sprawling, musical, multimedia episodic adventure which she creates entirely by her own hand. Scriptwriting, acting, animating, filmmaking, sound design, and songwriting are only a few of the skills involved in bringing this show to life. Its story is that of a witch who is cast astray after losing her home, and finds herself with a group of lost kids playing a game of piracy. She is soon carried away by the fantasy, and devotes herself to becoming the greatest pirate her world has ever seen. This story is based on characters and places invented by Lali in her earliest childhood, and it has been in development her entire life. New episodes are in active production as Lali drives towards the completion of the story.

In all of her work, Lali Wilde is constantly pushing at the edges of reality— questioning, investigating, and playing with what is possible. Her work dances with whimsy and humor while simultaneously confronting deeper questions of morality, meaning, and spirituality. Her multimedia approach makes for projects that expand beyond a medium, and develop a world entirely of their own. She hopes for her audiences to allow themselves to get lost within them.