David Garneau, a scholar, artist and former participant of the Biennial of Contemporary Native Art, wrote beautifully in a Fuse article :
“Art is a strange supplement. It is not essential to our survival but is integral to our humanity. It is the ornament, the flourish, the extra effort, the unpredictable addition, the unnecessary necessity. Good art is not always good design. Unrestrained by craft, art can so embellish an ordinary function as to make it useless; render a vessel, for instance, so beautiful that we feel the need to protect it from its intended service. Art is the site of intolerable research, the laboratory of odd ideas, of sensual and intuitive study, and of production that exceeds the boundaries of conventional disciplines, protocols and imaginaries. Art is a display of surplus, of skill, ingenuity, knowledge, discipline, time, labour and wealth. It embroiders status, disguises corruption and celebrates power. But art is also the stage where other surplus finds expression. It can be a way for the marginalized, refused and repressed to return.”