AUBREY CALAWAY
Aubrey Calaway is an artist and curator based in Portland, Maine. Born in Houston, he is often in southeast Texas, New York City, and Los Angeles. His work focuses on how sex, reality, and the human are manufactured and performed in contemporary American culture. His practice moves between performance, visual art, and writing, and he serves as the founding director of the Violet Institute for contemporary trans culture.

With an interest in prose, photography, digital mediums, installation, ethnography, and relational aesthetics, Calaway creates and consults on non-traditional archives, parafiction, and virtual fieldsites. His work often draws from improvised theater, playwriting, puppetry, drag, stand-up, modeling, and monologues; his original show This is Improv! received the Patron's Choice Award at its PortFringe 2026 debut. Calaway’s work has been presented at the Portland Museum of Art, SPACE, and Portland Stage, and he has collaborated with institutions like ICA Miami, MIT, and Black Mountain Institute. His writing has been published in outlets like the Texas Observer, the Houston Chronicle, and Cite Magazine; his photographs have appeared in The Portland Dirt, Weathered, and the Transgress survey of contemporary trans artists (Bluebasket Press 2026). Calaway was the 2023 Salt Artist-in-Residence at Monson Arts.  

Before founding the Violet, Calaway served as the director of Foghorn, an audio documentary collective space in Portland. He was on staff at TransLash Media as a producer and project manager from 2022 to 2025, during which time his team was honored with a GLAAD Media Award, multiple Signal Awards, and a Webby nomination. He is the host of secret salon.

He studied sociology at Brown University, where he graduated with honors, Magna Cum Laude, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He also attended the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies at Maine College of Art & Design, where he later returned as a lecturer.