Debbie Westergaard Tuepah is an interdisciplinary Canadian artist and occasional curator who relies on mass media and the physical to reveal hot-spots and states of precariousness, expose our complicity, and challenge how we function as humans.
Her work is influenced by the mechanisms of her previous marketing career where information and data are imperative to understanding and influencing human behaviour, and by her ongoing study of physical objects and environments.
While she also works in 2d, photography, and with various technologies, Tuepah’s immersive installations and sculptural works made of materials such as yarn dipped in acrylic paint, paint, wood, found objects and detritus are what she is best known for. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the US in galleries such as Surrey Art Gallery, The Reach Gallery Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery (Family Fuse), Bellevue Washington’s Sculpture Biennial, Ontario’s DNA Artspace, and Access Gallery.
In 2011, Tuepah earned an honours BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she was awarded the John C. Kerr Chancellor’s Award for Academic excellence and outstanding work. She has received numerous awards but of particular note she was a finalist for the 2016 CASV Emerging Artist Award, and in collaboration with artist Roxanne Charles their community-engaged work Bearing Witness, contributed to Surrey Art Gallery’s 2019 Canadian Museum Association Award in Education, specifically in Indigenous contemporary art education.
Tuepah served as VP + Treasurer on the Emily Carr University Alumni Board, she is a founding and active member of the curatorial collective AgentC Projects, and is an active member of the arts community.
b. 1960, Vancouver BC | Lives and works in Surrey, BC
Her work is influenced by the mechanisms of her previous marketing career where information and data are imperative to understanding and influencing human behaviour, and by her ongoing study of physical objects and environments.
While she also works in 2d, photography, and with various technologies, Tuepah’s immersive installations and sculptural works made of materials such as yarn dipped in acrylic paint, paint, wood, found objects and detritus are what she is best known for. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the US in galleries such as Surrey Art Gallery, The Reach Gallery Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery (Family Fuse), Bellevue Washington’s Sculpture Biennial, Ontario’s DNA Artspace, and Access Gallery.
In 2011, Tuepah earned an honours BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she was awarded the John C. Kerr Chancellor’s Award for Academic excellence and outstanding work. She has received numerous awards but of particular note she was a finalist for the 2016 CASV Emerging Artist Award, and in collaboration with artist Roxanne Charles their community-engaged work Bearing Witness, contributed to Surrey Art Gallery’s 2019 Canadian Museum Association Award in Education, specifically in Indigenous contemporary art education.
Tuepah served as VP + Treasurer on the Emily Carr University Alumni Board, she is a founding and active member of the curatorial collective AgentC Projects, and is an active member of the arts community.
b. 1960, Vancouver BC | Lives and works in Surrey, BC
