(Canadian, b. 1953) is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography, text, artist books, video and performance. Her work addresses the constructed social, cultural and political limitations women face in public spaces, arts institutions and the art historical canon. Rejecting the patriarchal, Eurocentric, capitalist conception of modernism prevalent in her early training as a painter, Clay engages intersectional feminist theory and semiotic theory. Her work employs repetition and mimicry to highlight stereotypical gender dynamics, authorial male director and underrepresented woman artist, and the ongoing lack of diversity in gallery and museum collections. In the late 1980s she became associated with a group of artists and curators including Lorna Brown, Marian Penner Bancroft, Judith Mastai, Kathy Slade, Jin-me Yoon and Anne Ramsden who actively developed the discourse around feminist artistic practice in Vancouver by organizing reading groups, workshops and seminars. Clay received a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax in 1980 and an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 1985. A major solo exhibition of her work traveled to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; and Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery, Halifax from 2002 to 2004. Group exhibitions including her work have been held at Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; and Yokohama Citizen’s Gallery. Clay’s work is held in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; City of Perugia; and a permanent installation at the Maison Patrimoniale de Barthète, France.

Claudia Cuesta (Colombian) is an artist, teacher and mentor based on the Sunshine Coast, BC. Though Cuesta is primarily a sculptor, she often integrates sound, video, performance and painting into her practice. Employing a wide range of materials—from industrial coal, steel and copper; intangible light and air; to organic silk, lambswool and water—she imbues the minimalist aesthetic of her sculptures with the presence of the human body. Cuesta explores the impact of manufactured belief systems and the material world on human ego, identity and physicality. Cuesta holds an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been exhibited at artsite Lab, Sechelt; Vancouver Art Gallery; pitt gallery, Vancouver; Indiana University, Bloomington; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Power Plant, Toronto, among other venues. Cuesta has held residencies in Chelva, Spain and at Kaneko, Omaha, and taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design until 2008, at the Universidad Nacional, Columbia in 1995 and at various schools in England between 1989 and 1993. Her work is held in numerous art collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, Bogota and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha.

Skeena Reece (Tsimshian/Gitksan/Cree, b. 1974) is an artist based on the West Coast of British Columbia. Her installation and performance work has garnered national and international attention, most notably for Raven: On the Colonial Fleet (2010) presented at the 2010 Sydney Biennale as part of the group exhibition Beat Nation. Her multi-disciplinary practice includes performance art, spoken word, humour, “sacred clowning,” writing, singing, songwriting, video and visual art. She studied media arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and was the recipient of the British Columbia Award for Excellence in the Arts (2012), the VIVA Award (2014) and the Hnatyshyn Award (2017). For Savage (2010), Reece won a Genie Award for Best Acting in a Short Film and the film won a Golden Sheaf Award for Best Multicultural Film, ReelWorld Outstanding Canadian Short Film, Leo Awards for Best Actress and Best Editing. Solo exhibitions include Surrounded at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (2019); Touch Me at the Comox Valley Art Gallery, Courtenay, BC (2018); Moss at Oboro Gallery, Montréal (2017) and The Sacred Clown & Other Strangers at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Winnipeg (2015). Group Exhibitions include Red on Red: Indigeneity, Labour, Value at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2022); Women & Masks: An Arts-Based Research Conference at Boston University (2021-22), Interior Infinite at the Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2021); Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2018-2019) and Sweetgrass and Honey at Plug In ICA, Winnipeg (2018), among others.

ReMatriate Collective formed in 2015 following its initial founding in 2014 as an online discussion focusing on the misrepresentation of Indigenous women in the media. The name ReMatriate confronts the term repatriate, or the return of cultural materials to their community of origin, which has become central to the zeitgeist of Western art institutions. Though often discussed in the context of decolonization, the etymology and application of the word repatriate reflects non-Indigenous relations to belongings, place, land and ownership. As acts of resistance against stereotypical misrepresentations of Indigenous women, the Collective centres the experiences of Indigenous women, Elders, non-binary and 2-Spirit individuals in their public art interventions and online photography campaigns. ReMatriate aims to empower Indigenous matriarchs, women and future generations through positive self-representation. The Collective has hosted skills-building workshops to connect Indigenous women to their traditional practices in contemporary ways, and their education efforts have engaged the public in critical Indigenous women’s issues. In 2018, ReMatriate Collective included Kelly Edzerza-Bapty (Tahltan, b. 1982), Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin, b. 1988), Tsēmā Igharas (Tahltan, b. 1984) and Denver Lynxleg (Tootinaowaziibeeng, b. 1986).

Holly Schmidt (Canadian, b. 1976) is an artist, curator and educator engaging in embodied research, collaboration and informal pedagogy. She creates site-specific public projects that lead to experiments with materials in her studio. As the core of her work, Schmidt explores the multiplicity of human relations with the natural world. During her residency with the Belkin’s Outdoor Art Program, Schmidt has utilized spaces between campus buildings through a process of collective knowledge production. These artistic and ecological interventions foster relationships with plants in a manner that is both distinct from the formal, university landscape design as well as from standard notions of gallery space. Schmidt has been involved in exhibitions, projects and residencies at the Belkin Outdoor Art Program; the Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver; AKA Gallery, Saskatoon; Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver; the Santa Fe Art Institute; Burnaby Art Gallery; and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, Vancouver.

Kika Thorne (Canadian, b. 1964) is a Toronto-based artist, activist and curator. Thorne extends her interest in geometry, physics and non-traditional materials through sculpture, printmaking, film and social practice. Her early work explicitly addressed sexuality, while her more recent work (after 1996) confronts issues of urban homelessness and the climate crisis. Thorne is currently part of Gentrification Tax Action, active in Toronto since 2018. The collective is one of many groups in the coalition Architects Against Housing Alienation representing Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023. Thorne received her MFA from the University of Victoria and is currently working on her PhD at York University, Toronto. Her work has been included in exhibitions held at Kino Arsenal and the Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin; MACBA, Barcelona; Murray Guy, New York; Or Gallery, Vancouver; Nanaimo Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Pleasure Dome, the Power Plant and G Gallery, Toronto; and the Art Gallery of Windsor. Her work was also included in E-Flux Video Rental, which toured the globe for five years. Thorne co-founded SHE/tv and the Anarchist Free Space, participated in the October, February and April Group collective protest sculptures and helped instigate Safe Assembly during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Tania Willard (Secwépemc Nation, b. 1977) is an artist and curator of mixed Secwépemc and settler ancestry and beginning January 2026, the Belkin’s Director/Curator. 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).

Barbara Cole is the Curator of Outdoor Art at the Belkin. Cole oversees the University’s Outdoor Art collection, commissioning new projects in public space and stewarding the existing artworks sited across the Vancouver campus. For over three decades, she has been actively involved in the field of public art working as an artist, curator, educator and consultant. In 2005 she founded Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting temporary projects in public space and continues today as part of the production team. Cole is also the principal of Cole Projects, a public art consulting firm that promotes experimental approaches to public art planning and commissioning. She has led workshops, lectured widely and published articles on the subject of art in public space. Cole taught at Emily Carr University from 1984 to 1999 and worked as a consultant to the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program from 1999 to 2004. In 2011, Cole received the Mayor’s Award for her contributions to the advancement of public art in Vancouver and in 2013, was a curatorial resident at ZK/U Center for Art + Urbanistics in Berlin, Germany.

Melanie O’Brian is Associate Director/Curator at the Belkin, and has been the gallery’s Acting Director/Curator 2022 to the present. Prior to joining the Belkin, O’Brian was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Art Galleries, including Audain, Teck and SFU Gallery, from 2012 to 2020. She was formerly Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. O’Brian has taught at UBC, Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University, and received her MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications and written extensively for catalogues and magazines.