Artist and curator Tania Willard named to shortlist for 2025 Sobey Art Award

Six finalists are up for Canada’s largest award for contemporary visual arts

Tania Willard. Photo by Billie Jean Gabriel

 
 

A LOCAL ARTIST and curator who centres art as an act of Indigenous resurgence has made it to the shortlist for the Sobey Art Award—not only the largest prize for contemporary artists in Canada, but one of the biggest funded prizes of its kind in the world.

Tania Willard, a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist, draws on connections to land, culture, language revitalization, and family, working though collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery.

Her artistic and curatorial exhibitions include Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2012 and Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe in 2021. Willard’s work is featured in collections of such institutions as the VAG, Forge Project, the Kamloops Art Gallery, and the Anchorage Museum.

Willard is the shortlisted nominee from the Pacific region. Other shortlisted members are Tarralik Duffy for the Circumpolar region; Chukwudubem Ukaigwe for the Prairies; Sandra Brewster for Ontario; Swapnaa Tamhane for Quebec; and Hangama Amiri for the Atlantic region.

The Sobey Art Award grants $465,000 in prize money, including the $100,000 grand prize. Each of the shortlisted artists receives $25,000 and the remaining longlisted artists receive $10,000.

The winner of the award will be announced at a special celebration on November 8, with an exhibition featuring works by the six shortlisted artists held at the National Gallery from October 3 to February 8, 2026.  

 

Tania Willard’s Surrounded/Surrounding with Woodpile Score, 2018. Wood-burning fire ring, laser-etched leather, wood and vinyl transfer, dimensions variable. Installation view, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. © Tania Willard. Photo by Rachel Topham

 
 
 
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Janet Smith
Janet Smith

Janet Smith is cofounder and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

 
 

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ART & DESIGNJanet SmithSobey Art Award, Tania Willard