Join us at Stride Gallery on Thursday, August 14th at 7:00pm for an evening of ceremony, poetry and art. All proceeds from this event go to the Palestine Red Crescent Society dedicated in administering care in Gaza. Hosted by Shafraz Ladak and Yutaka Asmara, we will begin with a smudging and drumming ceremony led by Chantal Stormsong Chagnon. We will have readings by Aya Yafaouni, Shafraz Ladak, Cobra Collins, and Yutaka “Isa” Asmara. Sketches from Maggie Tiesenhausen, Marigold Santos, Mantis Mei, Chris Lukas Maier, Faye Heavyshield, and Brady Fullerton are available for sale by donation. We will also have snacks!
Chantal Chagnon is a Cree / Métis Singer, Drummer, Artist, Storyteller, Actor, Educator, Workshop Facilitator, Social Justice Advocate and Activist with roots in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan. She shares Traditional Indigenous Songs, Stories, Culture, History, Arts, Indigenous Craftsmanship and Teachings. Chantal has presented in Classrooms from Preschool through University and Professional, Community, and Social Justice Events and Gatherings. Chantal aims to entertain, engage, enlighten, educate, and inspire everyone she meets.
Aya Yafaoui is a young spoken word poet and editor from Canmore, Alberta. At age 24, she made history as the first champion of Canmore’s Slam Poetry Competition. Her Palestinian-Lebanese-Canadian background has inspired her art and support for indigenous liberation around the world. Aya’s celebrated poem, “The Cedar Tree,” which expresses her grief and hope for a peaceful Lebanon is published in The Medium’s 2025 Hope Magazine. Her editorials advocating for Palestinian liberation are featured in The Medium’s Opinion section and can be found at themedium.ca. As the descendant of a Nakba survivor, Aya’s greatest hope is to one day return to her grandfather’s land in Yafa with the key to her family’s occupied home in hand.
Shafraz Ladak is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, activist and organizer. The 4x Calgary Poetry Slam champion, Shaf’s writing blends politics, social justice and literary narrative into a poetic experience that tugs at the heart and inspires our inner humanity. He has represented Calgary at literary festivals across Canada and placed 3rd at the 2025 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championships. A board member of the Single Onion reading series and the Director of Communications for the Calgary Poetry Slam, Shaf has dedicated his life to advocating for the arts.
Cobra Collins is a Mohkínstsis based Indigenous and settler poet of significant height.
She has represented Calgary on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and was humbled to sit as Indigenous advocate on the Writers’ Union of Canada’s (TWUC) National Council in 2021 and 2022. Her debut short film “Hop Along Hang On” has been featured nationwide and internationally in numerous film festivals and has won several awards, including Best short film, Black Hills film festival. Cobra was also honoured to be shortlisted as a nominee for Calgary’s 2016 & 2018 poet laureate.
Yutaka “Isa” Asmara is an Indonesian artist, writer, and youth activist based in Moh’kinstsis. Involved in their communities at home and at school, they were the two-year delegate for the Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council and was nominated for the Premier’s Citizenship Award for community service. Their fine arts work explore themes of cultural hybridity, intimacy, and visuality, having exhibited in the Northeast Mini Galleries and the Little Gallery at UofC. Yutaka seeks to reveal and redefine the great political and social forces affecting the communities they belong to as inherently intimate, observing and compelling moments where that intimacy can affect the world.
Maggie Tiesenhausen is a northwest Albertan settler music producer and artist. Their auditory works present insurgent, speculative imaginaries, and rural cinema-verité in a complex balance. The sometimes-disparate elements in interplay—found sound, field recordings, barely-audible confessions, amplified noise floor, accidental recordings, amateur performance—bring clouded internal sites into view. Often emotionally charged, atmospheric, and unresolved, these aural worlds summon a cinematic visuality. Tiesenhausen lives in Treaty 8 territory, in the unincorporated hamlet of Demmitt, Alberta. They also share a collaborative singing practice with artist and musician Jen Reimer called Tunnel.
Marigold Santos was born in the Philippines, and immigrated with her family to Canada in 1988. She pursues an interdisciplinary art practice that examines notions of heritage, folklore, motherwork, and decolonization presented within the otherworldly. Her paintings, drawings, sculptures, and tattoo work explores self-hood and identity that embraces multiplicity, fragmentation, and empowerment, as informed by diasporic experiences. She holds a BFA from the University of Calgary, and an MFA from Concordia University. As a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, she continues to exhibit widely across Canada.
Mantis Mei is three oranges in a trenchcoat. They are a Mohkinstsis/Calgary based artist and have recently been investigating themes of phenomenology, design thinking and processes, failure, and Buddhism. Mantis is currently working towards a BFA in Sculpture.
Chris Lukas Maier recently graduated from the University of Calgary with a BFA in Visual Studies with First Class honours. They specialize in painting and mixed media work. Maier has given art history lectures at the University of Calgary, and exhibited work in local public institutions including The Nickle Galleries, Contemporary Calgary, and nvrlnd arts foundation. Two of their works have been chosen by the City of Calgary and Calgary Transit to be displayed permanently as part of the Bus Rapid Transit Shelter artwork program. In 2023 they were the recipient of the Kathleen and Russell Lane Canadian Art Award. They have also facilitated painting classes and workshops with the Alcove Centre for the Arts. Most recently Maier took part in a group show alongside three other artists at the Nickle Galleries titled “Spaces Becoming Form.”
Faye HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Nations in Urban Landscapes at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver; rock paper river at Gallery Connexion, Fredericton; Into the Garden of Angels at The Power Plant in Toronto; kuto’iis (blood) at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery; the 2005 Alberta Art Biennial; Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and Clans, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Institutions that house her work include the National Gallery of Canada; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection; the Alberta Foundation of Art; the Glenbow Museum; the Heard Museum; the Eiteljorg Museum of Native American Art and Western Art; the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Kelowna Art Gallery. She is the recipient of an Eiteljorg Native American Contemporary Art Fellowship and received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2021.
Brady Fullerton is a lens-based artist and academic whose work explores themes of trauma, masculinity, isolation, mental health, addiction, and beauty, through a visual exploration of the quotidian and mundane. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and uses a photographic documentary style to approach philosophical questions through art, as well as navigate his mental health. His award-winning photographic work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, online, and in print. Currently, he is working on several projects including Nowhere, a lens-based exploration of trauma and memory in his hometown of Drumheller, Alberta. This work is generously funded by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.