Taryn Walker: A Visiting Scholar from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
April 21 – May 12, 2024
Taryn Walker has been awarded the Michael Smith Foreign Study Scholarship administered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU).
This scholarship supports a master’s student to travel to a university outside of Canada to do research and engage in cultural exchange. Walker is under contractual agreement with SSHRCC and SFU to complete three weeks of research and mentorship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, through the interdisciplinary practices of printmaking, sound recording, and installation techniques.
Walker has selected the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as the site for research abroad, as it presents the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art printmaking facilities and learn from Professor Koichi Yamamoto, Althea Murphy-Price, and Beauvais Lyons, as well as the MFA cohort.
Walker is a queer, interdisciplinary Indigenous artist of Nlaka’pamux, Syilx, and mixed European ancestry whose work explores concepts of identity, tenderness, healing, cycles of life and death, spiraling time, and futurity through drawing, printmaking, installation, and video.
In 2018, Walker graduated from the University of Victoria’s BFA program with a major in visual arts and a minor in art history & visual studies. Walker is currently doing their MFA at Simon Fraser University in interdisciplinary contemporary arts.
Walker was awarded the Diane Mary Hallam Achievement Award by the University of Victoria for academic excellence and commitment to the arts in 2018, and in 2017, they were also longlisted for the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, presented by the Presentation House Gallery for demonstrating excellence as an emerging video artist and photographer. Most recently, in 2022, they were shortlisted for the ohpinamake prize, presented by the University of Saskatchewan.
Walker’s work has been presented in spaces, residencies, and events across Western Canada and beyond. Their artistic research has also been granted support from the Edmonton Arts Council, the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, and the First Peoples Cultural Council.
Taryn Walker – CV
Education
Simon Fraser University, M.F.A, Interdisciplinary Contemporary Arts, 2022 (In Progress).
University of Victoria, B.F.A., Major – Visual Arts, Minor – Art History and Visual Studies, 2014 – 2018.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023 – The View Gallery, Vancouver Island University, “Echoes From A Time Not Yet Here”, Nanaimo, BC, Curated by Chai Duncan
2022 – Society of Northern Alberta Printmakers (SNAP) Gallery, “decompose this body.” Edmonton, Alberta, Curated by April Dean.
2019 – Arc.Hive Artist-Run Centre, “Sentiments of a Swarm”, Victoria, BC.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 – “Tooing and Froing In My 4th Dimension: SFU MFA Spring Show”, SFU 611 Studios, Vancouver BC.
2022 – ohpinamake Prize Shortlist Exhibition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK.