Tania Willard is a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist whose research intersects with land-based art practices. 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 (2012–14) 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 NY, Kamloops Art Gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin 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. In 2023, BUSH Gallery was named as a Future Studies recipient from Ruth Foundation for the Arts. In 2025, Willard received one of the top Canadian contemporary art prizes—the Sobey Art Award.  

Photo credit: Billie Jean Gabriel photography 

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.

Art, Activism, and Climate Change: Conversation with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, online January 17, 2023. 

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). 

Whose Land Have I Lit on Now? Contemplations on the Notions of Hospitality, edited by Federica Bueti, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Agudio, S A V V Y Contemporary The Laboratory of Form–Ideas, 2021. 

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

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

Duffek Karen and Tania Willard, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Figure 1 Publishing, MOA UBC, 2016. 

Exhibitions

Sobey Art Award, National Gallery, Ottawa, ON, 2025 

Town and Country, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Vancouver UBC, 2024 

Indigenous Histories, Kode Museum, Bergen, Norway, 2024 

Practices of Suffusion: Tania Willard, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge AB, 2023 

Sensitized: Tania Willard, Pale Fire Project, Vancouver BC, 2023 

On the line, FotoFocus Biennial, Cincinnati Arts Centre, Ohio, 2022 

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 

Resist! The Art of Resistance, Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Köln, 2021 

Affirmations for Wildflowers, SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver BC, 2020 

Soundings, Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, 2019 

#callresponse (national tour), group exhibition, 2017–2019 

The Work of Wind, Air, Land and Sea, Missasuaga ON, 2018

Public Art

Commissioned 2023: Splatsín survivors, Residential School monument 

Commissioned 2022: Secwépemc LandMarks, Secwepemcúl’ecw 

Commissioned 2021: Future Matriarchs, (with Kristabelle Stewart) UBC School of Engineering, UBC Okanagan Gallery collection, completed 2022 

Commissioned 2020: Ancient Country Seat, Commission for York University, Gelndon Campus, completed 2024 

Commissioned 2018: Until the Drumming Stops, City of Edmonton Public Art, completed 2021 

Commissioned 2016: Rule of the Trees, public art for TransLink, Vancouver BC, completed 2019

Curatorial

BUSH Gallery residency (ongoing) 

The Structure of Smoke, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver BC, 2026 

Passages: Olivia Whetung, Gallery 44, Toronto, ON, 2018 

LandMarks/Repéres2017, National Parks CanadaUnceded: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, MOA, Vancouver, 2016 (Co-curator) 

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, NM USA 

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories​, MOA Vancouver, 2016 

Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery and National Tour, 2012 

Oblique Drift, Nicholas Galanin, grunt gallery and MOCNA Santa Fe, NM, 2010