Tashana Adams is an artist from Toronto, ON, with family ties to Rigloet, Nunatsiavut, NL. Her primary practice is beading, but she has also expanded to textile work.
Adams attended an art program at Central Technical School in Toronto for high school, where she learned various artistic practices like printmaking, drawing and sculpture. She enrolled at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2006 for image arts and left the program with a professional certificate in 2008. Today, her practice primarily consists of beading, which she started doing in 2020 when a friend encouraged her to try it. For Adams, beading is a therapeutic practice and one that brings her closer to her Inuit culture. “This is how I got more in touch culturally, because I grew up not in touch with a lot of my family,” [1] she says. She uses seed beads, gemstones and antler in her earrings. Art making, for Adams, is something she does for herself rather than to sell. She often creates bolo tie earrings for friends, and she doesn’t repeat designs, so each pair of earrings is unique. “I just don’t like doing the same thing twice!” she says. She uses antler in many of her earrings as the centrepiece, with colourful beading rings surrounding it.
Flowers are also a key visual in Adams’s work. In 2024, Adams created several pairs of earrings to donate to imagineNATIVE, which were prizes for the fundraising gala. In 2024, she created a pair of mittens from a mitten-making kit and hopes to continue working in textiles and learn some traditional practices, like making kamiit. Living in Toronto, Adams finds it challenging to connect with other Inuit artists and learn traditional skills, like creating kamiit and parkas, so she is mostly self taught. “Trying to learn more traditional stuff has been very tough,” she says. She tries to go to Tungasuvvingat Inuit in Toronto when workshops are offered. Adams created 12 bolo ties for the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation’s annual general meeting in Toronto in 2025.
Adams is inspired by the artists she sees on Instagram, like jewellery makers Shirley Hooch and Tammy Hannaford and those who make parkas and traditional clothing, like Blanche Winters, Victoria Kakuktinniq and Winifred Nungak. “I love people who make traditional work,” she says.
One of Adams’s goals is to start working with sealskin. “Lately I need to push myself to do it…I find it really difficult to cut.” Though she finds working with it challenging, Adams is passionate about keeping traditions alive by working with raw materials such as sealskin. “Holding on to traditions that are being lost is so important,” she says. In the coming years, Adams would like to learn how to make traditional Inuit garments and would like to connect with more Inuit artists.