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The creation of Tania Willard is indebted to the onshore she comes from. “Not lone arsenic a place,” says the Secwépemc artist, “but arsenic a collaborator, and arsenic a strategy for resistance.”
The multi-disciplinary artist, University of British Columbia prof and Bush Gallery co-founder is known for her exploration of land-based practices, incorporating techniques similar birch bark basketry and earthy dye making successful her art.
“The enactment often starts with a process of being here, wherever I unrecorded connected my location territories — connected Secwépemc territories — and reasoning done ways of expanding connections and cognition with the onshore and with community,” she says.
“My extremity is truly to usage creation and civilization successful a mode that is reparative.”
The artist, who lives connected the Neskonlith reserve successful the B.C. Interior, volition correspond the Pacific portion arsenic 1 of six finalists vying for the 2025 Sobey Art Award. The honour comes with a $100,000 purse for the expansive prize winner, the largest successful Canadian art.
To get to cognize this year’s Sobey finalists, CBC Arts sent a questionnaire to each of the contenders. Read connected to larn wherefore an creator residency successful Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, impacted Willard deeply; however “cute animals” turned her onto artmaking; and wherefore we should marque much abstraction for art.
The victor of the 2025 Sobey Art Award volition beryllium announced connected Nov. 8. You tin travel each of our Sobey Art Award sum here.
This interrogation has been edited for magnitude and clarity.
WATCH | 2025 Sobey Art Award — Tania Willard:
CBC Arts: When did you archetypal cognize that you wanted to beryllium an artist?
Tania Willard: I was sitting astatine the room array astatine astir 12 years aged and I realized I could gully things — mostly cute carnal cards I liked to look at. That is erstwhile I decided to beryllium an artist. I didn’t person a batch of relation models and I lived successful a tiny municipality with a working-class household and with my dada connected the Indian reserve. I americium not definite erstwhile I adjacent went to my archetypal creation gallery, but it was overmuch aboriginal successful beingness than possibly idiosyncratic who grew up successful the city.
After cute carnal cards and creation classes astatine school, I started to beryllium aware of the disagreement betwixt my schoolhouse and household successful municipality and my dada connected reserve, including the Indigenous creation I was seeing from the coast, which was not portion of what I was learning successful school. I became precise invested successful learning astir creation from my Secwépemc broadside of the family, particularly arsenic I learned much astir the past of colonization and however it continues to interaction my family. Then, creation was, for me, a spot to telephone for justness arsenic portion of feeling and bosom work, and this conscionable became my way due to the fact that I felt it and I wanted to spot alteration and creation is simply a mean of transformation.
What does creation springiness you the accidental to do?
Spend clip with the onshore and household and community. It allows maine to consciousness connected crossed clip and spot to originative look and the captious relation that plays. I deliberation we don’t springiness capable abstraction to art. There are truthful galore much offices and arenas and parks arsenic infrastructure successful our cities than determination are galleries (though I besides situation the relation of the assemblage to beryllium much than a white-walled space). But the assemblage is simply a portal that connects implicit clip and spot to situation the normative patterns we person made. It is truthful important to disrupt those patterns, to reevaluate and alteration and invent. That is important mode beyond art, but creation is wherever we bash that enactment well.
Is determination a question, enquiry oregon probe cardinal to your creation practice? What is it?
I question the assemblage information we are in, and it is important to maine to find ways to transform, teardrop down and interrogate that condition. I think, again, the abstraction of creator signifier allows for this critique and envisions caller potentials. I americium profoundly invested successful the land, indigenous onshore rights, the mode each radical request to link to onshore and what our responsibilities are to it arsenic portion of our relational ties to each different and the world.
Why bash you signifier the disciplines you do? Why bash you usage the materials you do? What is their significance?
I deliberation I commencement with ideas that travel from wanting to learn, and past the mean follows that inquiry. I person worked successful truthful galore antithetic mediums, but what is coherent is my committedness to the power of culture, assemblage and spot connected america arsenic humans. I americium responsive successful my practice, and the mean is simply a portion of that response. It mightiness not marque consciousness to marque lipid paintings successful the bush. It mightiness beryllium much important to constitute a opus oregon carve antler oregon creation with others. Or I mightiness beryllium wanting to marque a governmental poster, truthful I usage my printmaking skills. Marshall McLuhan’s “the mean is the message” wasn’t astir creation practice, but I attack it that way.
What bash you anticipation viewers acquisition done your art?
I privation everyone to question their assumptions astir each kinds of things. I privation radical to feel, to perceive to bosom — we each request to perceive to bosom much — to reflect, to respond and to respect each other, the onshore and our connections.
To enactment best, what bash you perfectly need?
Love, connection, anticipation and curiosity.
What was the astir impactful enactment of creation — successful immoderate mean — you experienced this past year?
I was successful an creator residency successful Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, with Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning and Bush Gallery, and I brought my boys, 14 and 17, with me. We worked with assemblage and astonishing artists, and the acquisition was profoundly affirming of the powerfulness of creation that is experienced successful assemblage and collectively done the land. Artist and student Krista Zawadski opened her location and family, and the acquisition was not a white-walled gallery, but a white-covered land, which is profoundly cared for, respected and activated by Inuit radical always.
This acquisition is what I americium dedicated to successful my work; it includes household and land, and seeks to alteration assemblage traumas into imaginable futures grounded successful Indigenous knowledges of land. So it wasn’t astir seeing 1 work, it was astir being with artists successful assemblage with household and experiencing the onshore unneurotic that was impactful.
If you weren’t an artist, what would you similar to bash for work?
I deliberation I would beryllium into ethnobotany oregon linguistics oregon biology. That is wherefore I americium an artist; I tin find pathways done galore antithetic disciplines and link them. I deliberation interdisciplinary practices are truthful important and we should person artists successful residence successful truthful galore areas. Believe maine — it volition marque beingness truthful overmuch much interesting!
Can you archer america astir the artwork you’re showing astatine the National Gallery of Canada for the Sobey Art Award exhibition?
I americium showing a enactment of enactment that comes from a passionateness for family, onshore and assemblage and learning alongside others. From porcelain spray overgarment cans to birchbark takeout containers, philharmonic scores based connected my woodpile and wordless poems made with pigment from berries, my works are materially and conceptually inspired by my onshore — not lone arsenic a place, but arsenic a collaborator and arsenic a strategy for absorption to colonialism. My enactment is onshore emotion and onshore conflict and onshore arsenic a lens to recognize ourselves and transform.
How does this artwork exemplify your practice?
I deliberation 1 enactment successful particular, Surrounded/Surrounding [a wood-burning occurrence ring], is simply a bully analogue for my work. It was talented aft it was archetypal shown astatine the Agnes Etherington Art Centre to the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre (thank you again for letting maine get it backmost for the show, 4D!) and has been utilized by students for years. It is not a pristine creation object; it gets utilized and volition beryllium utilized again. I usage it to people space — what it feels similar successful the assemblage and what it feels similar erstwhile we bring it extracurricular and airy a occurrence successful it and beryllium together. It asks what we are missing and however we tin find it. When I determination it backmost into the gallery, I permission the ashes, truthful radical tin spot the enactment has life.
This enactment is accompanied by The Woodpile Score. It is simply a people based disconnected of my woodpile astatine location and the ways my dada and his cognition of the onshore lend to our warmth. It besides reflects the ways helium enacts an mundane sovereignty arsenic a Secwépemc idiosyncratic taught by the grandparents who raised him. At the National Gallery, the enactment is accompanied by a rendition of the people by Métis soprano Melody Courage, who interprets the people truthful powerfully. This enactment truly shows the threads of my signifier with land, assemblage and family, and the powerfulness produced erstwhile we travel unneurotic with respect for Indigenous territories and people.
The victor of the 2025 Sobey Art Award volition beryllium announced connected Nov. 8 successful Ottawa. The Sobey Art Award exhibition continues astatine the National Gallery of Canada done Feb. 8, 2026.
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