I’m excited to screen my first Super 8 film ‘wîhtikôw’ tonight at 7 pm with the @artifactfilmfest as part of the @accessartsca Sounds of the Silver Screen class!
My film explores my love for horror stories, but especially those from back home in Fort McMurray and now Fort Chipewyan.
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Classmates will also be screening their beautiful films, including @paulbrain.art , the production assistant on my film, and Carla Salter, who filmed so many of the stills you see here as the Camera Assistant.
Thank you, @katiewackett , for being such an amazing facilitator and producer!
This film wouldn’t be possible without support from the Original Peoples Investment Program @calgaryartsdev
It is with tenderness and pride that we bid farewell to our phenomenal Co-director, Dan Cardinal McCartney.
Dan has been with Stride Gallery in multiple capacities since 2020, he has been an incredible Assistant Director and Co-Director. His care and wisdom has brought forward a path to anti-racist, decolonial, and queer possibilities at Stride fostering a beautiful community of care.
Dan has done so much for Stride in the past 5 years, so to highlight a couple monumental moments:
In April of 2024, Dan curated Process: Presence and Resurgence, Stride’s first ever group exhibition showcasing only Two Spirit, Transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse artists. This was also Dan’s first solo curation, the first of many!
In July 2024, Dan as one of the first Co-Directors in Stride’s history, alongside eva, helped to lead the organization in moving into a new and safer location, with attention on ensuring better support for future staff and artists.
At the start of 2025, Dan saw through the beginnings of Stride’s newest programming, our Residency + Exhibition program, hosted here in the gallery space. During a year of continual shifting and change following Stride’s move and staff transitions, Dan onboarded the new Co-Director team with patience and grace. He has remained a great mentor and friend for the new team, while imparting all his amazing institutional knowledge and experience as a practicing artist.
Although we are sad to see Dan go, not all is lost, he will still be lurking amongst Stride’s archives for the next year as our new Archivist!
Thank you Dan for all your care, consideration, and the knowledge you have shared with this community. We cannot thank you enough!
-Co-Directors, Mell and Lex, on behalf of Stride Gallery
I’m feeling pretty lucky to have a duo exhibition up in @artspaceptbo till August 16th! Thank you @lagomorphhh for inviting me into exhibiting with you
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Our collaborative artist talk is this Saturday, August 9, 2025 at 12pm (10am MST). Come listen to me explain how my love for horror movies inform my family paintings lol
For Ontario folks: Join ArtSpace in the gallery for a live stream artist talk
For online: Email [email protected] for the Zoom link!
About the show:
Then They Saw Firelight is a duo exhibition featuring multidisciplinary artists Morgan Possberg and Dan Cardinal McCartney. Exploring the ongoing effects of colonialism within their artistic practices, Morgan and Dan share the experience of growing up as Métis people formerly placed in the foster care system as children.
Head to @artspaceptbo website for more info about our exhibition!
✨ Here’s my honest reaction to seeing my finished 10ft painting “Muster Point” for the first time! Lmao
My largest painting to date, featuring my sister Karri and I from my mom’s 1995 photograph. The aftermath of the 2016 Horse River fire in Fort McMurray, Treaty 8 combined with the 2024 wildfire smoke features as our backdrop. Swipe right to see the myth, the legend Herself.
I was grateful for the time to finish this one during my first week at the Banff Centre’s Kapishkum residency. ✨ This summer has been a whirlwind so far!
Captured 📸 @lagomorphhh
We hope you can join us this Friday at @urbanshamangallerywpg for the opening of Little Fires by Dan Cardinal McCartney. Here is a small peek at one of the videos that will be on display.
NIMAC is excited to announce the exhibitions LITTLE FIRES by Dan Cardinal McCartney presented in partnership with Urban Shaman
The exhibition will run from July 4 to August 30, 2025
@urbanshamangallerywpg | 2nd floor 290 McDermot, Winnipeg
Opening reception July 4
Artist talk and community events with Dan in attendance in late August
Little Fires is a three-channel video installation that explores the intersections of environmental change and colonialism. Centering on building a small fire, Dan reflects on returning to their hometown of the oil industry, Fort McMurray, and their family’s ancestral territory in Fort Chipewyan. As someone who grew up in foster care, Little Fires is a return to the land and an embodied memory. Dan offers footage of the aftermath of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, referred to locally as “The Beast,” at the bank of Horse River where the fire initially sparked.
Accompanying the videos is a voiceover of my poem The Arrival, which engages directly with The Book of Dene—a 1976 missionary publication produced by Catholic priests at Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan. The book contains translated oral histories of Chipewyan people, told originally in different dialects of Dene, then translated into French and later English for publication. The original speakers, including Dan’s ancestors, were never recorded.
In Fort Chipewyan, Dan document the eerie dry shores of Athabasca Lake, where the water level has never been this low since time immemorial. They visit the shoreline where the remains of the Holy Angels building lie after being anonymously burnt down, including the site where parents of the children who were forced to attend would set up camp on the river banks at night to keep close but also let their children know they were still there. Dan’s family was forcibly enrolled at Holy Angels for generations, from its founding in 1873 to its closure in 1974.
More about the artist in the comments…
✨I’m excited and feeling so grateful to be a part of the Banff Centre’s Visual Arts Residency – Kapishkum: Métis Gathering until July 4th!
Collaborating + sharing a studio with @lagomorphhh ✨
I decided to head down south from my residency in Fort McMurray due to the wildfire spread. Sending lots of love to family, friends, the animals and the land back home. Thank you @artscouncilwb for your generosity and understanding.
My sis Karri is gifted with a freshly tanned moose hide from relatives in Fort Chipewyan to go with her never ending antler collection! Under careful inspection, she has accepted this gift lol
Swipe all the way right to spot my kokum’s cat “Baby”
Right now, my hometown of Fort McMurray is under the threat of a fire evacuation.
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I share these photos of the Holy Angels Residential "School" site, a place that operated until 1974 and where generations of my family were forced to attend. I felt a burning in my feet while walking the grounds.
A few years ago, folks burned down the buildings and church, a painful reminder of the past. Some fires are all right. Let's hope the current Fort McMurray fire continues to be held.
If you think climate change, extraction, and colonialism are not intertwined, you haven't been paying attention.
Here are only a handful of a few photos I took of Fort Chipewyan with my late foster father, Will’s old digital camera. He never had the chance to utilize it. Now that I’m back in McMurray, I’ll remix and transfer these and other images into mixed-media collages.
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Returning home to Fort Chipewyan has been a dream of mine for a very long time. My body has never felt so inherently connected to the land, and I felt such a calm wash over me. Donna, the Rural Arts Support Liaison, generously welcomed me back to the community. She gave me daily tours around my family’s reserve of Dog Head and various landmarks of the area.
Since going home, I’ve had the privilege of reconnecting with extended family, visiting my buried ancestors, and being chased by large rez dogs. On a somber note, the water in Lake Athabasca hasn’t been this low since time immemorial. The caribou no longer migrate through the shoreline as they have for countless generations.
More photos to come
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