Shane OnYou is a transmasc gender queer drag performer in Calgary. Their advocacy work promotes queer youth, trans and drag visibility and safety in their community.
Recently there have been an increase of hateful rhetoric and violence against LGBTQ+ people in Calgary. A number of protests and anti-protests have been happening around the city.
Addi Pose is a trans female drag performer in Calgary Alberta.
Samuel Crowfoot is the great-great-great grandson of Chief Crowfoot, who was instrumental in establishing Treaty 7. Samuel is shaped by his ancestral history, formed by a sordid, colonized world. Samuel was raised Mormon in Southern Alberta and has since left the religion. While most of his extended family still practice, Samuel's journey leaving Mormonism has been complex. This body of work explores his journey to find his place among his people, culture, and history.
“The hardest part about being Indigenous and leaving from/reprogramming from a high demanding religion/cult, is that you have no more safe spaces. Religion replaced my culture and consumed my time spent studying the Book of Mormon, Doctrine of Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price (Mormon books of doctrine)."
"My underlying experience is that I feel robbed of knowing my true culture and cheated out of my heritage. I am awakening from the colonized religious matrix, into a world of lost opportunity and wasted time. I am trying to catch up.”
This body of work considers our formed biases of sexuality, age, love, gender, family, and domesticity. It examines how these things are viewed from outside, but also within the queer community. The work reflects on both public and private displays of queerness and finding the fragile balance of safety and fulfillment.
Fred was born into a into a strict, military family in 1947. During a time in Canada when it was illegal to be a homosexual, Fred married a woman and had two children. Twenty-three years later, he came out as gay, and the marriage dissolved. Fred’s journey of finding himself during such an unsure time for queer people has been complex.
