The Polygon Gallery: Tania Willard: Photolithics

The Polygon Gallery presents Tania Willard: Photolithics from March 7–May 24, 2026. The exhibition is Willard’s first since winning the 2025 Sobey Art Award — Canada’s biggest contemporary art prize — and is her largest solo show to date. Photolithics, a portmanteau of ancient words for “light” and “stone,” highlights Willard’s evolving photographic practice, in which the sun and the land play a vital role beyond the surveillance or spectacle of nature. For The Polygon, she devises a distinctive treatment for the gallery’s windows based on her research into Salish basketry. Passing through patterns of cedar root, the sun’s rays cast a warm protective glow, or “safelight,” on all the works in the gallery and the people coming to witness. Other works in the 10-year survey include “Only Available Light” (2016), which is being presented inside a purpose-built c7ískten̓ (kekuli or underground pit house), “Anthro(a)pologizing” (2018), “Vestige” (2022), and more.

Admission to The Polygon Gallery is by donation, courtesy of BMO Financial Group.