Tania Willard wins Canada’s top contemporary art prize – The Art Newspaper

Tania Willard was named winner of the 2025 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s top contemporary art prize, at a celebration on Saturday evening (8 November) at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa. Last year’s winner, Nico Williams, was on hand to announce the 2025 winner to rounds of applause.

Willard described the experience of winning the Sobey Award as “a waking dream”. “Our dreams are a powerful part of ourselves,” she tells The Art Newspaper. “I think about basketry as a container of harvests, full of berries and other things, and of ideas. We see it as a lively, sophisticated, contemporary medium. It’s such a medium of the land.”

Willard, who is a member of the Secwépemc First Nation, also has settler heritage and is based in Neskonlith, British Columbia, will pocket C$100,000 ($71,200). The five other Sobey finalists—Tarralik Duffy (representing the Circumpolar region), Nigerian-born Chukwudubem Ukaigwe (Prairies), Sandra Brewster (Ontario), Swapnaa Tamhane (Québec) and Hangama Amiri (Atlantic region)—each take home C$25,000 ($17,800).

The award recognises Canadian artists whose careers have reached a pivotal stage; it was established in 2002 and originally only artists under age 40 were eligible, though now it is open to artists of all ages (Willard is 48). Works by all the finalists are on view at the NGC until 8 February 2026.

In accepting the award, Willard first expressed gratitude to her immediate family and then to the broader community, the Secwépemc nation 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.”

Willard’s practice spans basketry, sculpture, public art, music, large-scale installation, text-based work and more. She is also a prominent curator, collaborating on the Indigenous-led, land-based, experimental and conceptual project Bush Gallery, and co-curating museum exhibitions including Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012) and Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (2021-22).

Jonathan Shaughnessy, the NGC’s director of curatorial initiatives and chair of the 2025 Sobey Award jury, said while speaking on behalf of the jury: “Rooted in Secwépemc knowledge, values and aesthetics, Willard’s multifaceted practice challenges us to expand our understanding of contemporary art and the role of the artist.”

He added: “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. Above all, she amplifies the power of the land.”

Among the 2025 jury members was 2021 Sobey winner Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Richmond Art Gallery curator Zoë Chan, Dunlop Art Gallery curator and director Alyssa Fearon, McMaster Museum of Art senior curator Betty Julian, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts curator of Québec and Canadian contemporary art Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, the artistic director of the Bonavista Biennale Rose Bouthillier and the writer, curator and researcher Carla Acevedo-Yates.

Willard tells The Art Newspaper that winning the Sobey Art Award will “allow for me to collaborate with the land and others in fighting for Indigenous resurgent practice and asserting a place for creative expression not only in the city, but rurally and on the reserve as well”. She adds: “I also want to advocate and encourage all people to spend time with art—we need more of it in our lives, especially now in the face of austerity and injustice around the world.”

She also cited her mentor, Delores Purdaby, a master Secwépemc basketry artist who has received little recognition for her work over four decades, from massive pieces taking years to create to smaller works sold to support her community.

“Art can change the world,” Willard says. “It’s changed my world.”