‘Our culture is our power’: Tania Willard wins Sobey Art Award

Tania Willard’s having a remarkable year.

News in June that she’d been selected the Pacific region finalist for the 2025 Sobey Art Award must have felt like completing a trifecta after recently unveiling two striking public artworks in Toronto, the “Ancient Country Seat” sculpture at York University and “Declaration of the Understory” installation underneath the Gardiner Expressway.

But sometimes good luck’s shaped more like a four-leaf clover. At 9:15 p.m. Saturday the Sobey Art Foundation announced Willard as their grand prize winner this year.

The 48-year-old artist and curator, who lives on the Neskonlith reserve in British Columbia, takes home arguably Canada’s most prestigious visual arts prize, awarding her $100,000 and the attention of the international arts world.

“I want to thank my community and nation Secwépemc people and all Indigenous people for carrying our languages and knowledges despite so many challenges that continue today — our culture is our power. I want to also thank the land, all lands that hold us,” she said in a press release.

“She harvests berries to make ink drawings, harnesses wind and fire to compose poems and operas, and builds worlds with her BUSH Gallery collaborators. In the face of precarity, scarcity and conflict, her work offers a model of sustainability, abundance and connection,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy 2025 Sobey Award Jury chair and director of Curatorial Initiatives at the National Gallery of Canada.

The 2025 Sobey Awards are celebrated at the National Gallery, where attendees at the elegant event will also likely lay eyes on works by the other finalists. These include Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, a graduate of the University of Manitoba’s Fine Art bachelor program, representing the Prairie region.

The Nigerian-born artist, curator and writer, who’s currently pursuing graduate studies at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., is perhaps best recognized for his paintings which blend elements of realism, pop art and surrealism.

Along with the other remaining shortlisted artists — Tarralik Duffy, Sandra Brewster, Swapnaa Tamhane and Hangama Amiri — Ukaigwe receives $25,000.

— conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca