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14 Jul 2023

Artist Talk: Tania Willard

  • Tania Willard

    Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation, b. 1977) is an artist and curator of mixed Secwépemc and settler ancestry. Willard’s research and creative processes are informed by land-based and community-engaged art practices, connections to culture and family, and intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Often focusing on Secwépemc aesthetics, language and land, Willard explores the shifts and tensions between ideas of the contemporary and the traditional. Willard centres art as an Indigenous resurgent act through her collaborative projects and her support of language revitalization efforts in Secwépemc communities. Willard’s personal curatorial projects include BUSH gallery, a conceptual space for land-based art and action led by Indigenous artists. Willard received an MFA from UBC Okanagan in 2018. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kamloops Art Gallery; Burnaby Art Gallery; and SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at FotoFocus Biennial; Cincinnati Arts Centre; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; and Open Studio Contemporary Printmaking Centre, Toronto. Willard has curated numerous exhibitions, including the traveling exhibition Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture that began at the Vancouver Art Gallery (co-curated with Kathleen Ritter); Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum of Anthropology (co-curated with Karen Duffek); and CUSTOM MADE at Kamloops Art Gallery. She was a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard was selected as one of five curators for a national scope exhibition in collaboration with Partners in Art and National Parks. She received the 2016 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art, the 2020 Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award, and was named a 2022 Forge Project Fellow. Her work with BUSH gallery was recognized through the Ruth Foundation for the Arts Future Studies award (2022). Willard is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Gallery Director at UBC Okanagan in Syilx territories (Kelowna, BC).

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In this artist talk, Tania Willard speaks about her work Affirmations for Wildflowers: an Ethnobotany of Desire (2020), a recent acquisition by the Belkin and part of the What is Welcome? exhibition.

Willard discusses Affirmations for Wildflowers in relation to the changing of the seasons and the cycles of wildflowers. The work was originally created in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and displayed in the windows of the SFU Galleries’ Audain Gallery. In both iterations, the work speaks to the viewer in a transformative time of global crisis, offering hope and a space for reflection.

 

IMAGE (ABOVE): TANIA WILLARD, AFFIRMATIONS FOR WILDFLOWERS: AN ETHNOBOTANY OF DESIRE (Detail), 2020. COLLECTION OF THE MORRIS AND HELEN BELKIN ART GALLERY, PURCHASED WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS AND THE MORRIS AND HELEN BELKIN FOUNDATION, 2023. PHOTO: RACHEL TOPHAM PHOTOGRAPHY

  • Tania Willard

    Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation, b. 1977) is an artist and curator of mixed Secwépemc and settler ancestry. Willard’s research and creative processes are informed by land-based and community-engaged art practices, connections to culture and family, and intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Often focusing on Secwépemc aesthetics, language and land, Willard explores the shifts and tensions between ideas of the contemporary and the traditional. Willard centres art as an Indigenous resurgent act through her collaborative projects and her support of language revitalization efforts in Secwépemc communities. Willard’s personal curatorial projects include BUSH gallery, a conceptual space for land-based art and action led by Indigenous artists. Willard received an MFA from UBC Okanagan in 2018. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kamloops Art Gallery; Burnaby Art Gallery; and SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at FotoFocus Biennial; Cincinnati Arts Centre; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; and Open Studio Contemporary Printmaking Centre, Toronto. Willard has curated numerous exhibitions, including the traveling exhibition Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture that began at the Vancouver Art Gallery (co-curated with Kathleen Ritter); Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum of Anthropology (co-curated with Karen Duffek); and CUSTOM MADE at Kamloops Art Gallery. She was a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard was selected as one of five curators for a national scope exhibition in collaboration with Partners in Art and National Parks. She received the 2016 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art, the 2020 Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award, and was named a 2022 Forge Project Fellow. Her work with BUSH gallery was recognized through the Ruth Foundation for the Arts Future Studies award (2022). Willard is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Gallery Director at UBC Okanagan in Syilx territories (Kelowna, BC).

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