Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation) works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production. Often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard’s curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, a national touring exhibition first presented at Vancouver Art Gallery in 2011, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum of Anthropology co-curated by Karen Duffek in 2016 and CUSTOM MADE at Kamloops Art Gallery. She has also been selected as one of five national curators for a national scope exhibition in collaboration with Partners in Art and National Parks. Willard’s personal curatorial projects include BUSH gallery, a conceptual space for land based art and action led by Indigenous artists. Willard’s current research constructs a land rights aesthetic through intuitive archival acts and land-based practices, focusing on Secwepemc aesthetics/language/land and interrelated Indigenous art practices.
On October 2, Emerge invites you to a virtual studio visit with Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation). During this studio visit, Willard will give an introduction to her art and practice, particularly focusing on her work in the exhibition Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. The studio visit will be followed by a short Q&A.
Emerge is a series of talks, workshops and behind-the-scenes tours dedicated to introducing visual art and art history students to the Vancouver art scene, with an emphasis on professional development. Each year, Emerge focuses around a key theme or set of ideas to guide discussions and events. The guiding themes of the 2020-21 academic year are Art, Community, and Social Change. Emerge is organized by the Belkin Art Gallery, the Art History Students’ Association, the Visual Art Students’ Association and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC. For more information about Emerge, contact Naomi Sawada, Manager of the Belkin’s Public Programs, at naomi.sawada@ubc.ca.
Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation) works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production. Often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard’s curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, a national touring exhibition first presented at Vancouver Art Gallery in 2011, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum of Anthropology co-curated by Karen Duffek in 2016 and CUSTOM MADE at Kamloops Art Gallery. She has also been selected as one of five national curators for a national scope exhibition in collaboration with Partners in Art and National Parks. Willard’s personal curatorial projects include BUSH gallery, a conceptual space for land based art and action led by Indigenous artists. Willard’s current research constructs a land rights aesthetic through intuitive archival acts and land-based practices, focusing on Secwepemc aesthetics/language/land and interrelated Indigenous art practices.
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public, gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action. Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement. Shifting and evolving, it gains new artists and players in each location. For this iteration on Musqueam territory, the Belkin has collaborated with UBC's Musqueam Language Program in partnership with the Musqueam Indian Band Language and Culture Department; School of Music; Chan Centre for Performing Arts; First Nations House of Learning and Museum of Anthropology to support the production of new artworks and performances by local artists.
[more]Emerge is a series of artists' talks, professional workshops and behind-the-scenes tours organized by the Belkin Art Gallery, the UBC Visual Arts Students' Association, the UBC Art History Students Association, the UBC Undergraduate Journal of Art History, and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC.
[more]Emerge is a series of artists' talks, professional workshops and behind-the-scenes tours organized by the Belkin Art Gallery, the UBC Visual Arts Students' Association, the UBC Art History Students Association and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC.
[more]The following is a list of resources related to Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. The list of resources compiled here is not an official recommendation, but is rather a list of suggested readings compiled by Public Programs and graduate student researchers at the Belkin Art Gallery. These readings are intended to provide additional context for the exhibition and act as springboards for further research or questions stemming from the exhibition, artists, and works involved.
[more]Surrounded/Surrounding includes a wood-burning fire bowl, etched leather camp stools and a life-sized rendering of the artist’s wood pile in a graphic score. Written on the split logs and the spaces between them are references to the breathing, beating labour that creates what a fire needs, as well as the trees, sun, sky and ground that surrounds and creates all else.
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