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Tania Willard

Tania Willard
Born 1977
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
Nationality Canadian Secwepemc
Known for Curator painting, installation, drawing, painting, printmaking, kinetic art, video, film, social art, new media art, video art, internet art,
Website http://www.taniawillard.ca

Tania Willard (born 1977) is an indigenous curator and artist from the Secwepemc nation, which is in interior British Columbia, 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.

Tania Willard was born in 1977. She grew up in Armstrong, British Columbia 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 doing breakdancing within the powwow.

Aside from her artistic career, Willard is also a mother and grows organic garlic.

Willard focuses on mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas. She is an artist and graphic designer. She creates in oil and acrylic painting, printmaking, pen and ink drawing, watercolour, mixed media and collage. One of her current projects is with an art collective she is a member of, The New BC Indian Art and Welfare Society. It is part of a project called BUSH Gallery that looks at how to create art spaces or possibilities that respond to Indigenous concepts of land.

Beat Nation started as an on-line 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 or approach—very immediate and somewhat more flexible. The intention was never to create a large scale traveling exhibition.

Willard is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art





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