Surrounded/Surrounding at BUSH Gallery, Secwepemcúl̓ecw

Documentation courtesy Kamloops Art Gallery and Garnet Dirksen photographer.

A rest used in musical notation is a taking off point for the making of a fire at artist Tania Willard’s home at Neskonlith Indian Reserve in Secwepemcúl’ecw (near Chase, BC).


Among invited guests from the Gallery and the artist’s community, the fire is lit and intentional rest is called on. The woodpile score is interpreted through a playlist by the artist’s partner Kevin Adam. Thinking through relationality and the importance of rest to recovery, as well as the movement of art objects, spaces, and conversations towards an Indigenous centred space—the artist’s homeland—the fire becomes a focal point of engaging and activating Willard’s work, Surrounded/Surrounding.


In lieu of a live feed or zoom of the event, the artist asks that those following the work, in particular BIPOC folks and those that identify as women, take a rest and reflect on rest; as a strategy of radical care, workers rights (especially in the precarity of creative labour) and anti-capitalism, that demands the recovery of our eco-systems and ourselves.


Tania Willard’s work Surrounded/Surrounding is a part of the exhibition Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, on view at the Kamloops Art Gallery until July 3, 2021.