You have one clear data point on sentience. Your own. When you first became cognitively aware, did you care about art?

We assume life will be carbon based because we are carbon based and we don't have any other data points for other types of life. If you are going to speculate on sentience, you must use what you know as that is the only good data point you have. Since the only creatures we know of with sentience are humans, you must start the conversation there. Any other conversation has no basis in reality and is just speculation without foundation