Radar

IT’S A PERENNIAL QUESTION: what is art? And it’s a question that leads to further questions. Where does art come from and how do we nurture and appreciate it? Are we telling the stories that need to be heard?

These are questions CAA Member Lisa Bird-Wilson considers every day as the CEO of SK Arts. Appointed last fall, Bird-Wilson is the first Indigenous person to hold the office at Saskatchewan’s 77-year-old institution (the oldest public arts funder in North America), which funds creative projects big and small — everything from written works and visual arts to theatre, dance and more.

“We’ve done a lot of trailblazing,” Bird-Wilson says. “But I’m always interested in the question of whose art is being valued and whose art has been valued? And where do we want to point ourselves going into the future? We need to think about where the gaps are.” Bird-Wilson herself is a celebrated writer with several published books. Her 2022 novel, Probably Ruby, recounts an Indigenous woman’s search for her identity. Her narrative explores the injustices served by misogynist attitudes and colonialism. It was a finalist in 2022 for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.

These stories, says Bird-Wilson, are finding a wider audience. “I have seen a real explosion of Indigenous authors. There’s a greater awareness of the importance of that history — about colonization, colonialism and decolonization.”

The interest in these topics is tangible, she notes, and growing. SK Arts holds about 3,800 pieces, which represents the works of 850 of Saskatchewan’s artists. These are available for loan or rent, Bird-Wilson says. “The Indigenous art in the collection is so popular [that] we don’t keep it in the vault. That art is on display and in the public domain — and it’s always in demand.”