Taylor Baptiste is an interdisciplinary artist from the Osoyoos Indian Band of the syilx Okanagan Nation. Raised in Nk’mip — a landscape of sagebrush and wild roses between the mountains and Osoyoos Lake — her practice is rooted in family, community, and ancestral history. Drawing from syilx storytelling and ways of knowing, her work reflects an ongoing relationship with the tmxʷulaxʷ (land) and tmixʷ (all living things), and a commitment to listening to the places and teachings that continue to shape her.

Taylor’s practice is guided by a desire to bridge ancestral knowledge with contemporary forms of expression, working to uphold, reimagine, and carry forward syilx ways of being in a changing world. Sculpture remains her primary medium, through which she blends Okanagan land-based materials and syilx cultural practices with contemporary approaches. Her work often incorporates materials such as ochre pigment, buckskin, rocks, sinew, beadwork, and found or ready-made objects. Open to experimentation, her interdisciplinary practice also moves across photography, film, projection, digital illustration, painting, and, more recently, performance.

In 2024, Taylor earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She has since returned home to Nk’mip, where she lives and works as both an artist and the Cultural Coordinator at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre. These roles are deeply interconnected. Her work at the Centre supports community-based research and archiving, the repatriation of cultural and community belongings, and the facilitation of workshops centered on syilx knowledge, land-based teachings, and cultural continuity. This reciprocal relationship allows her artistic practice to remain grounded in community and living knowledge, while her creative work continues to inform and expand her role within syilx-led spaces and futures.

To follow along her journey, you can find her on Instagram at @taylorbaptiste.art