Tanya Lukin Linklater


Tanya Lukin Linklater is an artist-choreographer of Alutiiq descent. Her work consists of performance collaborations, videos, photographs, and installations.

Biography

Linklater was raised in Afognak and Port Lions in Kodiak Island. She is of settler and Alaskan descent. Married to Omaskêko Ininiwakartist Duane Linklater, she now lives and works in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Holding a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.Ed. from the University of Alberta, Linklater is currently pursuing a PhD in cultural studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Her practice includes performance, works for camera, writings, and installations, with an emphasis on collaboration with other Indigenous artists. Linklater's work is informed by the relationships between bodies, histories, poetry, pedagogy, Indigenous conceptual spaces, including Indigenous languages, and institutions.
Linklater was selected as the first Annual Indigenous Artist-In-Residence at All My Relations Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She served in the role from February 26 to March 5, 2017. That same year she was named artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. During her August residency, she collaborated with dancers on the performance Sun Force as a response to the AGO's exhibition Rita Letendre: Fire and Light.
In 2017, she co-founded the Wood Land School at the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art along with her husband and fellow artist, Duane, curator cheyanne turions and artist-author Walter Kaheró:ton Scott. Wood Land School: Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December was explained by the collection as a "single year-long exhibition that will unfold through a series of gestures—clusters of activity that bring works into and out of the gallery space—such that the exhibition is in a constant state of becoming."
In 2022, Tanya participated in the Aichi Triennale and the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Awards

In 2013, Linklater received the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature. She has also been awarded multiple grants from the Ontario Arts Council. In 2018, Linklater was awarded the Inaugural Wanda Koop Research Fund, presented by Canadian Art magazine.

Select exhibitions

Solo

Group

Publications

Three Parts on Poetry: Orality and Action, The Edges and the centre, Voices On Her Cures, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Hanne Lippard, and Tiziana La Melia, C Magazine, Issue 127.The Insistence of a Crow Archivist: Wendy Red Star, Tanya Lukin Linklater, BlackFlash Magazine, 2017.
  • Slow Scrape, 2020.