Tania Willard


Tania Willard is an Indigenous Canadian multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and curator, known for mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas. Willard is from the Secwepemc nation, of the British Columbia interior, Canada.
Willard was the co-curator for the art exhibition, Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, which toured in major galleries across Canada.

Biography

Willard was born in 1977 and grew up in Armstrong, British Columbia, Canada, as well as back and forth to her father's Indian reserve. A formative moment in her life happened when she was 16 and selling fruit for her aunt at a powwow; while there she saw a group of kids breakdancing.

Career

"Interconnectedness is the root system of my work as an artist. Land based art, community engaged practice, printmaking, painting are the mediums I most often work in, these ways of working are tied to me, I am tied to my ancestors, we are tied to the land." - Tania Willard
Willard is an artist, graphic designer, and curator who focuses on mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. In the opening essay to Willard's exhibition, Claiming Space, at the Kamloops Art Gallery, Beverley Clayton, Acting Director, writes: "...inspired by geological landforms on traditional Secwepemc land and by other aspects of the place, Tania Willard's art work acts as a conduit between generations and cultures." She works with oil and acrylic painting, printmaking, pen and ink drawing, watercolour, mixed media, and collage. She is also making public art projects, including a collaborative community mural with the artist Guillermo Aranda and the Secwepemc Native Youth Network entitled Neskonlith Mural, in 2013. Willard is a member of the artist collective New BC Indian Art and Welfare Society.
From 2013 to 2015, Willard was the Aboriginal Curator in Residence at the Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art. In 2017 Willard had a solo exhibition at the Burnaby Art Gallery: dissimulation.

Curatorial work

Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture

Willard curated the exhibition project Beat Nation, which started as an online project for grunt gallery. It features visual art, videos, music, and writing. Beat Nation the Exhibition toured starting in Vancouver to Toronto, Kamloops, Montreal, Halifax and Saskatoon. Willard states that, "it was a really important journey to take this exhibit to different places; the context of the exhibition is to present indigenous artists today who respond to both socio-political states of Indigenous peoples and struggles, as well as use a mix of quite contemporary mediums and ancestral ideas." Beat Nation started with a very artist-run-centre approach—very immediate and somewhat more flexible. The intention was never to create a large scale traveling exhibition.

BUSH gallery

BUSH gallery is an experimental land-based, Indigenous-led artist residency that takes place on Willard's land in Secwepemc Nation in interior British Columbia. In an issue of C Magazine guest edited by Willard and Peter Morin the editors state, "BUSH gallery is a series of on-going gatherings of like-minded folks united under questions concerning art making, land, Indigenous art history and interventions into the colonial." This issue also included the BUSH Manifesto.

#callresponse

#callresponse is a multifaceted project, co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and in partnership with grunt gallery, supported by the conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. It includes a website, social media platforms, touring exhibition, and catalogue, which aim to strategically centre the vital presence of Indigenous women across multiple platforms. The project features five commissions from Indigenous women around Canada, such as Willard, Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq, to respond to their work.

Exhibitions

Select artist exhibitions