Current Exhibition
August 27th, 2026 - Sept 15th, 2026
Opening reception August 27th, 5:00-8:30
4910 21A street SW Calgary AB
(and by appointment, text: 403.401.7890)

For those in the know:

With the works of: Blake McLeod, Edwin Isford, Kylie Fineday, Curated by nimkii 

I live within sightline of Goliaths Bathhouse, a Gay men’s bath house on the back end of 17th avenue. Watching people come and go from the discreet alley from my patio, as I smoke a joint and contemplate the latest B.S. from the UCP government (same new-new-old-old) is my Friday night routine. 

Standing on my patio watching the Bathhouse regulars come and go, I think of my friends and I, screaming along to Carly Rae Jepson and dancing around my kitchen wearing halloween costumes. Tomorrow we’re in our 30s, we have “real” jobs; I write emails and attend meetings where I repeatedly say something like “lets loop in so-and-so, lets make that an action item, I think we should circle back on that….”. Tonight I’m going to wear clothes made for boys and put my tongue down some girls' throat in the bathroom of a dirty bar. 

I think about all of the queer ancestors who we owe everything to. The two-spirit ancestors who built their lives and became community pillars in small reserve towns, the ancestors who became the blueprint for how I move through this world, who hold community together through crisis - a sacred role. 

Playing pretend is what we have, it's how we make our worlds real. We meet each other in our make-believe worlds and make them real, even if just for a night. I’ve learned to look in the back alleys, the bathrooms, the underpasses and the warehouses. There I find my friends, lovers, ex-lovers, and ex-friends; and often they are the same person. Everybody is only a few steps from each other; my community is formed of could-have-beens, should-have-beens, and I’m-glad-it-didn’t-happens. 

I guess we’re all living next to the bath house, smoking the end of yesterday's joint and watching the crowds come and go. 

Kinanâskomitin

This exhibition ties together the works of Queer, trans, and 2 Spirit artists who use metaphor and story to speak about their lived experiences, particularly in an Albertan context. This exhibition balances the difficulties of creating and living a life as a queer person in a hostile province, with the close communities and found families that Queer people form. Existing as a queer person is inevitably a life of existing in the underneath, the margins, and the inbetweens; between personal and political, love and loss, and between activism and self-care. 

Within this context, all of these artists use story and metaphor to speak about their lived experiences navigating personhood, love, and existence, while keeping some pieces of information private. Not everything is for everyone, and some pieces of these stories may be personal or unshareable - only for the eyes of a creator, or for other queer, trans, or 2-Spirit people. Metaphor, story, and omission of information have a very strong and long history of being used by queer people to stay safe while having important conversations and signalling to their own communities.