Join artist and 2025 Sobey Art Award winner Tania Willard and critically acclaimed artist and filmmaker Dana Claxton, for a conversation accompanied by the Capture Photography Festival Featured Exhibition Tania Willard: Photolithics, at The Polygon Gallery. First connected through the Native Youth Movement,  Willard and Claxton continue a lifelong conversation, discussing how lens-based art complements land-based practice. The talk will be introduced by Monika Szewczyk, Audain Chief Curator, and moderated by Serena Steel, Assistant Curator — both curators of the exhibition.

Talk at 7:00pm

Admission is by a suggested donation of $10-$20, courtesy of BMO Financial Group

Your RSVP will guarantee you a seat at the event

About Tania Willard
Tania Willard’s practice activates connection to land, culture, and family, centring art as an Indigenous resurgent act through collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and support of language revitalisation in Secwépemc communities. Her independent curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Hip Hop and Indigenous Culture, co-curated with Skeena Reece at grunt gallery online, which became the major touring exhibition Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, co-curated with Kathleen Ritter at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012–2014); Nanitch: Early Photographs of British Columbia from the Langmann Collection, co-curated with Heather Caverhill and Helga Pakasaar at Presentation House Gallery (now The Polygon Gallery); and Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology co-curated with Dr. Kóan Jeff Baysa, Satomi Igarashi, Erin Vink, and Manuela Well-Off-Man at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe (2022-ongoing). Her previous solo exhibitions have been presented at Kamloops Art Gallery in 2009, Burnaby Art Gallery (with the New BC Indian Art and Welfare Society) in 2018, Pale Fire in 2023 and Southern Alberta Art Gallery in 2024. Willard’s artworks are included in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Forge Project, Kamloops Art Gallery, and the Anchorage Museum, among others. In 2016, she received the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s 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. She is the 2025 winner of the Sobey Art Award – Canada’s highest honour for contemporary artists – and, beginning in 2026, she is the Director of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. Between March and June, 2026, she also takes part in rememory, the 25th Edition of the Biennale of Sydney under the artistic directorship of Hoor al Qasimi.

About Dana Claxton
Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed artist who works with film, video, photography, single/multi-channel video installation, and performance art. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the body, the socio-political, and the spiritual. Her work has been shown internationally and is held in public, private, and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Getty Museum, Modern Museum of Art, Eiteljorg Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Forge Project, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. She is a professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. She is a member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations located in SW Saskatchewan and resides in Vancouver, Canada. Dana comments, “I am grateful for all the support my artwork and cultural work has received. I am indebted to the sun and my sundance teachings—mni ki wakan—water is sacred.”

This event is part of the 2026 Capture Photography Festival Speaker Series and is presented in partnership with The Polygon Gallery and Critical Image Forum, UBC. Capture's 2026 Speaker Series is generously supported by The Michael and Inna O'Brian Family Foundation.

Banner image: Tania Willard, photograph by Billie Jean Gabriel, beaded hoop earrings by Matilda Shae Joe; Dana Claxton.