Tania Willard, MFA

Assistant Professor

Creative Studies, Visual Arts

Office: CCS 366
Phone: 250.299.5835
Email: tania.willard@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Visual Arts, Curatorial praxis, Indigenous contemporary art, land-based art, Indigenous resurgence, relational aesthetics, socially engaged practice, BIPOC and diversity and equity practices in contemporary art.

Courses & Teaching

Visual Strategies and Research, Indigenous Land-based Art, Contemporary Indigenous Art, Indigenous Art Intensive

Biography

Tania Willard is a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist/curator whose research intersects with land-based art practices. An Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBCO in Syilx territories (Kelowna, BC Canada), her practice activates connection to land, culture, and family, centering art as an Indigenous resurgent act, though collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and support of language revitalization in Secwépemc communities. Her artistic and curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012-2014) and Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe (ongoing). Willard’s work is included in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Forge Project, Kamloops Art Gallery, and the Anchorage Museum, among others. In 2016, she received the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art. In 2020, the Shadbolt Foundation awarded her their VIVA Award for outstanding achievement and commitment in her art practice, and in 2022 she was named a Forge Project Fellow for her land-based, community-engaged artistic practice.

(Profile photo credit: Billie Jean Gabriel)

Websites

www.taniawillard.ca

Degrees

MFA, UBC Okanagan, 2018

Research Interests & Projects

CFI Site/ation Studio: Indigenous Land as Art is a land-based Research and Creation studio that focuses on Indigenous contemporary art as resurgent cultural practice. In this research studio, the research program aims to develop Indigenous specific models of contemporary art that question the dominance of Western aesthetics in Canadian contemporary art through a focus on land-based art practice.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Combe, Jennifer and Tania Willard. “Art Mom Reflections Interruption/Disruption/Eruption.” Visual Arts Research, vol. 48 no. 2, 2022, p. 28-36. Project MUSE

Tania Willard, Surfacing, “Voicing And Signalling Freedom In Relational Performance: Cheryl L’hirondelle and Camille Turner’s Freedom Tours”,  PUBLIC 64: Unsettling Settler Canadian Nation-Building (Provisional Title) (Spring 2021)

Willard, Tania, and Karen Duffek. “MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum.” BC Studies, no. 199, 2018, pp. 113.

Duffek Karen and Tania Willard, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Figure 1 Publishing, MOA UBC

Guest Editorship: “Site/ation by Guest Editors Peter Morin and Tania Willard.” 2018.C: International Contemporary Art (136).

Whose Land Have I Lit on Now? Contemplations on the Notions of Hostipitality, E D I T E D B Y Federica Bueti, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Agudio, S A V V Y Contemporary The Laboratory of Form–Ideas, 2021

Exhibitions

On the line, 2022 FotoFocus Biennial, – Cincinnati arts centre, Ohio, “Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World)”, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin Germany (2022), Artwork TO, I am Land That Remembers, Union Station TO (2022), “Resistance: The Art of Resistance, Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Köln (2021), Affirmations for Wildflowers, SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver BC (2020), Soundings (2019) Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, #callresponse (national tour), group exhibition, 2017-2019, The Work of Wind, Air, Land and Sea (2018) Missasuaga ON.

Curatorial

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, NM USA, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories​ (2016, MOA UBC),  LandMarks/Repéres2017, National Parks Canada

Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012, Vancouver Art Gallery and National Tour), BUSH Gallery residency (ongoing)