Image Description: Detail of ‘Decomposition’ 2024, Solana Ayida Morante, acrylic on canvas.

Solana Ayida Morante, Andy Rubio, Morgan Possberg Denne, Levin Ifko

Curated by Dan Cardinal McCartney.

April 4 – May 24, 2024.

Sneak Peak viewing on Thursday, April 4 at 2-6pm.

Opening reception on Friday, April 5 at 6-9 pm. Curator welcoming remarks at 7 pm.
Light refreshments and snacks will be available.

Bath Time! Go get your brother & sister~! performance on April 26!

Process: Presence and Resurgence is a multidisciplinary group exhibition based in Calgary, AB, that bolsters the visibility of artists from Two Spirit, transgender, and non-binary communities in Stride’s Main Gallery space. With the rise of transphobic rhetoric within the province and across the country, Process: Presence, and Resurgence gestures to the need for unabashed, meaningful support for trans artists from a local to national level in contemporary art.

Curated by Dan Cardinal McCartney, invited artists inhabit the exhibition theme of rigorous, process-based ways of making art as a metaphor for trans liminality. Exhibiting artists transforming Stride’s Main Gallery space include Solana Ayida Morante, Andy Rubio, Morgan Possberg Denne, and Levin Ifko. Each individual artist’s mediums intersect through process, spanning across durational performance, painting, quilting, taxidermy, and installation. Taking place during the springtime season, Process: Presence and Resurgence also explores the fluidity of time, rituals, and life cycles inherent to trans futures.

Solana Ayida Morante is a Queer, Trans, Indigenous-Latina/British mixed-race artist practicing
in Mohkinstsis. She is a painter, music producer and musician with training at AUArts (2003,
2007), MRU (2005), and holding a BFA in music from the U of L (2014), and a diploma in
Engineering Technology from Lethbridge College (2019). While generally exploring the body,
gender, and sexuality, her work is positioned more concentratedly to query the dichotomous,
often porus or even simultaneous, realities existent in opposing dynamics such as:
inward/outward, male/female, movement/stillness, fugitive/accessibile, group/individual,
alone/together, and desire/desirability. Often optimistically entangled, her work attempts to make
explicit the liminal: highlighting it’s inherent fugitivity and queerness in continuation with Trans
being and existence within late-stage colonial capitalistism.

Andy Rubio ( No-Body:) ) is a Queer, Trans*, and French-Can./Chinese mixed-race artist
practicing in Mohkinstsis. They are a printmaker, fibre artist, writer, studio facilitator and
technician, holding a BFA in Print Media from AUArts, 2023. Through play with humor, tense
absurdity, and juxtaposition – primarily utilizing imagery related to automobiles, dead animals,
anthropomorphic taxis, and text – they enjoy exploring themes of Queer visibility and
experiences, liminal space, representation, commodification, and nostalgia. Andy has writing in
Illingworth Kerr Gallery’s Emerging Art Writer’s Program 4 and Hungry Zine’s Issue 07:
Funeral Foods.

Morgan is a Non-Binary mixed settler-indigenous artist, curator, writer and space designer. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from NSCAD University in 2019, attended U of C for an M.Arch in 2020, and are currently a Master of Fine Arts Candidate at the University of Guelph. They primarily make work as part of an ever-evolving collective called Lagomorph, currently partnering with Julian Zwack and Noble. They acknowledge that their work doesn’t come from a vacuum, and in fact they can’t do their work alone. Their communal based artist practice allows them to explore ideas, concepts, and forms in a way that a singular entity couldn’t, with a healthy support group to allow them to delve into deeply personal concepts.
Building off of their experiences as a foster care survivor and adoptee, they make work focused around colonialism, queer histories, working class history, present day politics and environmentalism through a personal storytelling lens; placing these histories and truths into personal, understandable and digestible
realities in conversation with each other. Morgan has recently attended the Banff Centre for a residency, taught fish skin tanning classes across turtle island, and is working on a Public Art commission for the Calgary Public Library, and for the upcoming CAFKA Biennial. They have exhibited their work across Turtle Island; at various institutions such as: The Banff Centre for the Arts, The Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown PEI, Gallery Gachet in Vancouver, TRUCK Contemporary Art, The New Gallery, and the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.

Levin Ifko is a queer and trans interdisciplinary artist. His visual art playfully considers ideas of
change, uncertainty, and longing. Mostly, they believe in art as a point of connection with
ourselves and our communities. Ifko graduated with a BFA in Media Arts (2022) from the Alberta
University of the Arts.