2016
Intergenerational effects (I found these in the BUSH)
Tania Willard, of Secwépemc and settler heritage, works within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Her curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-2014), co-curated with Kathleen Ritter. In 2016 Willard received the Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art from the Hnatyshyn Foundation and a City of Vancouver Book Award for the catalogue Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Willard’s ongoing collaborative project, BUSH Gallery, is a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledges and relational art practices. Willard is an MFA candidate at UBCO Kelowna, and her current research constructs a land rights aesthetic through intuitive archival acts.
Vintage glass Listerine bottles, seed beads and digital prints.
The objects here, found on the artist’s reserve, reference dark histories of substance use and the self-medicating work of communities addressing trauma in the wake of the residential school system and colonial experiences of Settler occupation. In the bottles, amongst loose beads the colour of mouthwash, partially obscured images show children in the back of pickup trucks on their way to residential school, and an image of the selenite windows in the Basilica of Saint Sabina, a historical church in Rome, Italy.
Related Program
Take Care, Circuit 4: Stewardship
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The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are currently closed.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.