WE ARE AN ARTISTS COLLECTIVE AND POLYCULT BASED IN CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA.
WE ARE MADE UP OF NEO-COWBOYS, WOLVES, AND SHEEP.

BOREDOM IS ONE OF OUR ENEMIES, AND OUR SHIT LIST IS ALWAYS A WORK IN PROGRESS. WE EMBRACE QUEERNESS, TRANSGRESSION, RISK, AND ALL THINGS THAT PUSH SOCIAL AND AESTHETIC BOUNDARIES.

WE ARE HYPER-DEMOCRATIC, ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN, ANTI-COLONIAL, AND ANTI-MIDDLE-MANAGER.

WE ARE A COLLECTIVE AT COLD WAR WITH THE WHITE WALL.

Cult of Personality

[Elizabeth Fox] --she/they

I am an interdisciplinary artist who works in the mundane world that is the "intersection between art and technology." Through an aesthetics of narcissism, hubris, and failure: I create spaces which disrupt the borders between self/other, art/life, and trashy/sophisticated. I hope to cause problems, and to transgress aesthetic, somatic, technological, and spiritual limits through our shared ideological constraints at the end of history.

I also designed, developed, and coded our website! let me know what you think. It's the first one I've ever published!

CULT OF PERSONALITY DOES NOT LEAD THE COLLECTIVE JUST BECAUSE SHE IS THE FIRST BIO ON THIS PAGE.

Cult of Horses

[Rein Vilu] --she/her

Rein Vilu is a poet, editor, and multimedia artist from Mohkinstsis/Calgary. Her longsheet A Decison Re: Zurich was published by The Blasted Tree in 2020, and her chapbook Drawings From Before The Red Year is currently out with Anstruther Press. In addition to her work with TRESSPASSING, Rein also serves as managing editor for filling Station Magazine.

Her ambitions include getting a hundred racehorses' names tattooed on her body, visiting Hong Kong, and forcing the Pokemon Company to acknowledge that Snorlax is a girl.

Cult of Hounds

[Sam Wiebe] --they/she

Cult of Hounds / Sam Wiebe uses a limited palette and grungy, street-art-inspired brushwork to explore themes of queer life and transgender identity. Presenting an uncompromising view of transfeminine life, she challenges the viewer to re-examine ingrained biases and the moral value of innate disgust with the “other”. Her work in Tresspassing explores the tension between trans joy and nihilist thought, executing absurd and stupid concepts with intense ritualistic gravity.

Sam pushes the boundaries of oil painting with a striking symbolic library and a deep understanding of the medium. Her painting style has been influenced by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and contemporary painters such as Carol Wainio. More broadly, she is inspired by street art, queer and punk artists, and the works of smaller online subculture artists in the trans and furry communities. Sam’s paintings are rendered on found or recycled materials such as scrap wood, scrap fabric, cotton t-shirts, and other odds and ends, assembled and installed with an irreverent and playful hand.

Cult of Teeth

[Jasper] --he/they

POPE, Elkie, bees, or Jasper, is a multidisciplinary artist who draws upon themes of religion, worship, ritual, trauma, life cycles, and agriculture in Their practice. They've had 3 root canals. Cult of Teeth is currently practicing in Moh'kinstsis (also known as Calgary). Formerly, They practiced on Treaty 8 land, where They also helped coordinate and run a non-profit initiative for marginalized youth in the Peace country.

Cult of Teeth's practice mainly deals with the ideas of interactivity, temporality, and accessibility within art. The human experience is vast and Cult of Teeth finds that people often lose focus and forget about the tethers that bind us all together; a beating heart, an innate curiosity, and the little rituals that accumulate over a lifetime. Less focused on identity, Cult of Teeth finds gratification in creating anonymous works and leaving them for strangers to discover. To this end, Their work often goes undocumented (unless a stranger has happened upon it and has documented it themselves). To the Cult, Their artistic practice is less about what They have created, and more about what the audience has received, experienced, and absorbed from the work.

Cult of Noise

[K Jackman] --he/she/they

Kaiden Jackman is a Calgary-based sound slinger.

Their work branches from ambient depressive guitar work, to blown out cathartic rage, to often comedic noise blasts.

He can often be spotted at a harsh noise show, being all miserable and shit. Or you can spot her at one of her own shows, running door and sound at the same time...
...
Being all miserable and shit.

Cult of Vermin

[Varlisle Francis Mayors] --they/them

Varlisle Francis Mayors (Cult of Vermin) is a multidisciplinary maker and artist. Their methods include tattooing, scarification, painting, defacing of religious imagery and sewing.

They can often be found outside scouring for dead things or drawing freaky little guys

Cult of Fools

[Neb Earle] --they/them

Neb Earle (Cult of Fools) is a maker and sewist originating from the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron, but currently residing in Mohkinstsis. They mainly create textile works, including clothing/costume design, quilting, and tailoring, but find themself venturing into other mediums such as illustration and performance.

Outside of making, they aspire to watch Pixar’s Cars trilogy more than any other human alive.

Cult of Riel

[Riel Starr] --he/him they/them

I am Red River Métis, I descend maternally from historic Métis families by the names of Berthelet, Caron, Ste. Germain, Larivière, Dazè, Dubois, and Boudreau; we come from the Red River Settlement and Batoche, Saskatchewan. My practice serves to counter the settler-colonial understanding of Métis people and our history and establishes us as a people who have been practising survivance for generations (Vizenor, 15). With the help of aesthetics of survivance I oppose aesthetics of colonialism; aesthetics including the Hudson’s Bay Company’s bloody legacy, the monuments and public art installed throughout Calgary, and the suburban cowboys that come out of hiding in McMansions on the outskirts of the city, riding their steel steeds, raised trucks to the summer Stampede.

Cult of Perversion

[Pajamas Concrete]

The entitity known as Pajamas Concrete is a performer, entertainer and absurdist. That's work exists as an amalgamation of crass, ugly and ridiculous things, often juxtaposed with Ernest moments of reflection and emotional authenticity. That's work has been in a long narrative with the structures of sound art, performance art and collage , meanwhile exploring themes such as paradigm/duality, compulsion, identity, chaos, isolation and humor.

Cult of Sacrilige

[holly/ricky nicole gallup/pp]
--they/he

holly/ricky nicole gallup/pp (cult of sacrilige) is an artist and poet. they use visual, written, and performative art to express his own subjective realities. religous imagery is a reoccurring element present in their work typically in blasphemous ways.

his art ranges from surreal expressionistic portraits to abstract reenactments of recurring hallucinations.