Tania Willard is a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist whose research intersects with land-based art practices. Beginning in January 2026, Willard is director/curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and associate professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC, Vancouver Campus. Currently an assistant professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan and director of the UBC Okanagan Gallery, Willard pursues a practice that activates connection to land, culture and family, centring art as an Indigenous resurgent act, through collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and by supporting language revitalization in Secwépemc communities.
Her artistic and curatorial work includes the travelling exhibition 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 (2021–22). 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 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.
