AUBREY CALAWAY


Aubrey Calaway is a cross-disciplinary artist, researcher and the founding director of the Violet Institute for Contemporary Trans Culture. Based in Maine, he maintains close ties to Houston, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Calaway's work includes multi-media essaying, documentary, digital photomontage and ethnography, fiction, installation, and performance.

His performance practice spans and often combines improv, stand-up, playwriting, live storytelling, hosting, drag, and puppetry. He has performed at SPACE, the Portland Museum of Art, Mayo Street Arts, Empire Comedy Club, Blue, and the Portland Stage; he was awarded the Patron's Choice award for his performance art piece "This is Improv" at Port Fringe 2026. His writing has been published in Cite Magazine, The Texas Observer, The Houston Chronicle, and Monster Beauties: A Trans Poetics Archive Anthology. His photography has appeared in Weathered, The Portland Dirt, and the forthcoming Trans-gress art book from Bluebasket Press. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he ran Particulate Matter, a literary and visual arts "quaranzine" distributed throughout the United States. Calaway regularly speaks and teaches on the topics of trans culture and documentary practice.

Calaway worked for several years as a producer at TransLash Media, where his team won a GLAAD Media Award, among other honors. He served as the director of Foghorn, an audio collective and co-working space in Portland, Maine from 2024 to 2026 and founded the Violet Institute for Contemporary Trans Culture in 2026.

Currently a member of the Tree House Film Collective in Portland, Maine, he was also part of the Filmmakers Collective at the International Film Institute of New York and Sarah Lawrence. He worked on the A24-distributed films Krisha (2015, SXSW Grand Jury Award) and Look Into My Eyes (2024) and was shortlisted at the Black Snapper International Film Festival.

Calaway has also collaborated with institutions like the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, MIT, the Black Mountain Institute, Brightline Defense, and Earth Refuge. He has conducted social science field research in Houston TX, Providence RI, and Pucayacu, Ecuador and is currently researching avatars and body doubles through digital ethnographic fieldwork.

Calaway studied at Brown University (Summa Cum Laude, Honors, Phi Beta Kappa) and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies at Maine College of Art & Design, where he also taught. He was the 2023 Salt Artist-in-Residence at Monson Arts.