Yorkton Arts Council

Aliya, an award-winning Toronto-based comedian and Canadian academy award-nominated actress, captivates audiences globally with her vibrant personality and sharp wit. Her one-woman show, ‘Where You FROM, From?’ celebrated for its humor and deep engagement with themes of identity and belonging, has won accolades at Ottawa and Toronto Fringe Festivals. Aliya disarms audiences with her playful mischief, tackling complex topics like race, gender, and social labels with humor, sharing personal stories from her life as a nomad and debunking assumptions. Currently touring North America and developing a new show in Australia, Aliya’s performances invite laughter while fostering a connection to humanity. Notably nominated for her acting in 'Scarborough,' Aliya continues to expand her creative repertoire in film and television, maintaining a legacy of impactful entertainment.

Cross vivid, folk-inspired melodies with two well-travelled jesters and you’ll find Jâca (ZH?-ka), a guitar and clarinet duo with exuberant energy, charm and wit. Clarinetist Wesley Ferreira and guitarist Jaxon Williams define their style as world music fused with personality, and are unafraid to experiment with that which captures their fancy - fresh takes on classics as well as composition from emerging artists. Highly skilled musicians and educators, both Wesley and Jaxon hold doctorates in music. Wesley performs worldwide as soloist, orchestral and chamber musician. International award-winning guitarist Jaxon is a former Fulbright scholar and master of the Spanish guitar repertoire. From the moment the duo step foot on the stage to the final round of applause, audiences members will find themselves engaged, entertained and enthralled. An evening with Jâca is an encounter with virtuosic performance, cheeky banter, and rhythms that coax you to play along.

After returning to music a decade ago and releasing 2022's Cannot Be Unheard, Calgary-based blues/rock singer, Ollee Owens, is better than ever with her latest dazzling, down-to-earth studio album Nowhere to Hide which will be released on October 25th. This new project reveals not just a soulful vocalist, but a woman who has lived through tough times and emerged triumphant. With purposeful authenticity, Ollee creates meaningful points of connection and facilitates emotionally charged experiences with the aim of enriching the sensed worth and value of every person. Combining her original work with unique interpretations of well-known and long-lost songs, the unpretentious backdrop of Owens’ acoustic duo creates a dynamic setting for her incredibly diverse vocal range. Tenderly comforting, passionately yearning, assertively warning, and warmly inspiring - an encounter with Ollee Owens will not only be memorable but meaningful.

"Directly from the stages of Broadway and the Stratford Festival, Lee Siegel presents a retrospective of the greatest soul singers of all time. Drawing from over twenty of the defining voices of soul music such as Sam Cooke, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Percy Sledge, Smokey Robinson and Edwin Starr, Lee guides his audience through the history of soul with personal recollections on how the music has influenced and guided his life. Featuring the multi talented Konrad Pluta on keys, this duo has been gracing the stages of Canada and the US since 2008 with their show full of love, laughter and nostalgia. Audience review:"The best singer in Canada!”; but come hear for yourself."

Teagan Littlechief's country rock show promises an exhilarating journey filled with captivating energy and uplifting melodies. Backed by her dedicated four-piece band, Teagan delivers a memorable performance commanding attention from the start. With powerful vocals and infectious energy, she leaves audiences spellbound and hungry for more. The dynamic repertoire includes engaging covers and heartfelt originals, such as her highly demanded rendition of Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee." Teagan also showcases her original music from her full-length album and chart-topping singles like "Hell Bent and Heaven Bound," highlighting her song writing prowess and ability to connect deeply with listeners. What truly sets Teagan's show apart is its unmatched energy and intensity, leaving audiences uplifted, inspired, and craving an encore. She is the first indigenous woman to win the SCMA Female Artist of the Year and is the 2025 SaskMusic Contemporary Indigenous Artist of the Year. Teagan Littlechief's country rock extravaganza is not just a concert—it's an unforgettable experience celebrating the power of live performance.

The exhibition The Spirit of Nature - Looking Beyond Yourself features fifteen paintings of different animals and insects. Each creature’s silhouette is filled with intricate Métis floral beadwork patterning. Swirling around the forms of the fauna is a diaphanous grey fog, a representation of the spirit world. Phyllis says "Each animal painting is adorned with a unique, colourful, symmetrical Métis floral beadwork design... Each bead, flower and animal are a part of something greater. Within each painting, the grey background and white flowers represent the greater universe. Hidden in each painting is a glass spirit bead. This bead, in traditional Métis beadwork, was an off colour or misplaced bead. The spirit bead symbolizes humility and it reminds us, humans are not perfect. Therefore, we need to learn to be mindful that each day is an opportunity to make improvements in ourselves for the betterment of "All of Our Relations"."

Atim Maskikhiy (‘Dog Medicine’ in Cree) presents works of seventeen artists local to the La Ronge tri-community area in Northern Saskatchewan. The multimedia pieces represent the artists’ interpretations of the dog-human relationship as expressed through preliminary findings of a community-driven research project conducted in the community. This unique marriage of art and science allows knowledge translation to a broader audience than typical of peer-reviewed research. Highlighting the need for improved access to animal health and welfare services in northern, remote and Indigenous communities everywhere, this gallery represents a call to action for systemic change at the human-dog interface. Through their works, the artists confirm that dog-human bonds are highly valued and often critical to human life and well-being in the north, and current approaches to ‘fixing’ dog problems in communities without regular access to care ignore important contributors at the root of the issue. This exhibition is curated by Dr. Jordan Woodsworth, Director, Northern Engagement and Community Outreach, Western College of Veterinary Medicine. The artists featured in this exhibition are: Andrea Cowan, Caron Dubnick, Donna Langhorne, Hilary Johnstone, John Halkett, Larissa Muirhead, Miriam Koerner, Molly Ratt, Myles Charles, Nancy Lafleur, Terri Franks, Sammi Kopeck, Abigail Clarke, Annalisa Heppner, Jade Roberts, Jasmine Grondin, and Wendy Cleveland.

Organized by Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery; Touring Saskatchewan through the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils; Curated by Jennifer McRorie The exhibition, Storied Telling, features photographic works by Canadian artists, whose images present as lens-based performance. The photographs reflect a performative nature, taken as video stills or documentation of performance art or presented as elaborate figurative compositions within settings that border on the fantastical or are imagined recreations of historic scenarios. In their adornment and positioning within their environments, the subjects of the photographs become powerfully iconographic. The resulting images are rife with story, reflecting diverse narratives that are poetic, political, surreal, spiritual, or perhaps even mythic; stories that inform and speak to cultural and diaspora identities that are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew through transformation and difference.

These series of works are an excerpt from a previous exhibition 'TADHANA'. These works explore the views as newcomer’s common concept that "fate brought us here" and the most common Filipino outlook of "bahala na" / "come what may" attitude which is prevalent to anyone. However, this attitude is not only a visible trait for newcomer alone, but these are also actually a day-to-day outlook of everyone just varying on expression and terms. The exhibition aims to finds parallels within culture to create better understanding of each and everyone’s' disposition in life. These bodies of work centres on the ideas of 'fate' while relating it to the quest for hierarchy of the modern society. As we live in a time that is always hungry for accomplishment, results and evidence of success, Patrick wants to elaborate the significance of fate thru commentaries using characters of reimagined folklore of his culture, patterns and juxtaposed imagery in order to give new meaning on how fate will lead us to one’s self discovery and freedom. Patrick Fernandez is a contemporary visual artist who lives and works in Regina, Saskatchewan. A native of Pangasinan, Philippines, his colourful paintings use symbolism and reimagined folklore imagery as a means of storytelling. His works are based on personal experiences that deal with displacement and adaptation, using circumstances as turning points for growth.

A Selection of Specimens is a solo exhibition be artist Kristin Teetaert. This exhibition features drawings, felt sculptures, and painted tiles. Kristin states: "The specimens came to life in 2012 in the form of a charcoal gestural sketch. The idea of sculpting them in wool followed. Wool allowed me to use bright colours and to create sculptures that were malleable. A tactile person, I wanted to play with my sculptures. This idea of being able to play with and manipulate the sculptures inspired the tiles; they are all able to interconnect with each other on all four sides. An important aspect of them was the ability to create different paths between the specimens by physically moving the tiles, or as a viewer, by following the shapes as they weave through the installation. I often alternate between two and three dimensions as I work. They are surprisingly autobiographical. I have always had a fascination with botany and nature, and a love of the unique shapes found in the natural and microscopic world. This, combined with my love of colour, has resulted in this series of playful sculptures and drawings that explore the ideas of interconnection, growth, spontaneity, and evolution."

The Burden of Street brings together paintings that depict contradictory compositions to provide distinct visual experiences while exploring the complexities of our surrounding built environment. The element of the wall plays a significant role in this body of work as public sites for dwellers to engage with the political and social fabric of society. These paintings aim to explore the dichotomy of walls as both tools of control and platforms for resistance. They delve into how authorities use these walls to impose their ideologies and values upon the people, while also emphasizing the agency of dissidents who transform these spaces into channels of protest and expression. A diverse range of artistic techniques and mediums, including collage, painting, drawing, and graffiti, are used to create satirical and ironic situations that reference the deep dualities, disparities, and hypocrisies inherent in ruling systems. Iranian born visual artist, Mohadese Movahed focuses on painting in her studio practice. She graduated with a Bachelor of painting degree from the University of Science and Culture (USC) in Tehran and an MFA from the University of Regina, SK, Canada in 2020. Currently based in Vancouver, Movahed has exhibited her work nationally, internationally and is a recipient of Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.

This body of work highlights the diversity, beauty, importance and plight of northern Saskatchewan muskegs, land that is being threatened with strip mining. Peat mining involves draining the water out of the muskeg then mulch the cover vegetation (sundews, pitcher plants, Labrador tea, black spruce, birch, willows, alders, cranberries, bunchberries, cloudberries, bog laurel, leatherleaf, and dozens of species of mosses). Muskegs/peatlands are very old landscapes, it takes 10 years for one centimeter of peat to form. It is important to Vanessa’s culture, and to the survival of traditions and knowledge to keep wild areas intact and undisturbed by resource extraction. Many people are unfamiliar with these areas, and this is Vanessa’s way of bringing the muskeg to the public. Vanessa is a Canadian artist of Woodlands Cree and Norwegian ancestry. She is a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band and her community is nemepith sipihk (Sucker River). She holds her Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of Saskatchewan. Vanessa is interested in utilizing memory, tradition and themes of nature in her work. Land conservation and land sovereignty are at the heart of her work, with her painting and beadwork focusing on the richness of the land, and in turn, the threats to the land.