Tania Willard’s work combines archival research and materials to question anthropological representations of her Secwepemc community. The work departs from an educational film by archaeologist Harlan Ingersoll Smith, a member of the infamous Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897–1902). Willard’s intervention into the film physically obstructs and distorts a clear view of the imagery. By confronting the desire of settler society to consume and exotify Indigenous cultures, Willard transforms Smith’s ethnographic video and renders it unavailable to viewers; instead, it comes only as light, as a meditation on loss and resilience transposed through time.

Willard has screened the film in her home community at BUSH Gallery, during the Luminocity Festival programmed by the Kamloops Art Gallery, at the Vancouver Art Gallery for ReFuse, and Only Available Light was exhibited at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto).