In May 2025, 11 artist-driven vehicles toured the sprawling parking lots of Calgary/Mohkinstsis, transporting strange, subversive, and satirical artworks into the far reaches of our fair city, located inside an unassuming motorcade of cars. Stops included exotic parking lots like the Walmart at Westbrook Mall, Crossroads Market, the Pick-n-Pull, Fish Creek Library, the Safeway at North Hill Mall, the Bass Pro at Deerfoot City, and Burnt Toast Studios / Idle Eyes / Congress Coffee in the Greenview Industrial District. At each stop, different people visited the exhibition – some on purpose, many by accident. The exhibition was designed to be encountered in the everyday, unromantic setting of car infrastructures across Calgary/Mohkinstsis.
We didn’t ask permissions to occupy each parking lot. The show is designed to “pack up and move along” like a car caravan. Despite this, we were never asked to leave. We were amazed by how little parking lot owners (via their security guards) seemed to care about our presence. It’s possible that encountering IDLE WORSHIP wasn’t even the weirdest part of their day.
IDLE WORSHIP is a tongue-in-cheek subversion of Calgary’s car-obsessed culture, responding to the prevalence of automobile infrastructure by reclaiming these paved places for people, art, and ideas. A convoy of subversive creativity, IDLE WORSHIP 2025 traversed our civic landscape as so many commuters do daily ~ but more subversive intentions. Pithy and playful, IDLE WORSHIP is equal parts community project, commentary, and intervention in plain sight.
ARTISTS:
Helen Young
Jennie Simm
Khalid Omokanye
Logan Lape
Nikki Klawuahboe & Lane Shordee
Patrick Hamilton
Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi
Rebecca Reid & Ryan Bourne
seth cardinal dodginghorse
Teresa Tam
Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett
PHOTOGRAPHERS:
Mike Tan
Elyse Bouvier
Allison Seto
Caitlind Brown
ORGANIZERS:
Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett
Above photos by Allison Seto
Above photos by Elyse Bouvier
Lux Exterior
Inspired by the drabness of the hard, cold concrete landscape of the parking lot, Lux Exterior juxtaposes a space generally occupied by metal machines with the presence of an obnoxiously bright, soft vehicle. The presence of Lux Exterior will surely encourage a perplexed smile on the face of the viewer, as its personality makes itself known in this vast environment.
Special thanks to Gail Garden for piloting LUX EXTERIOR!
Photos by Mike Tan, Caitlind Brown, and Elyse Bouvier
The Japanese Potato Truck
The Japanese Potato Truck is inspired by the story of the artist’s family, the Ohamas – dispossessed and forcibly relocated onto the prairies from the west coast during the Japanese internment. Uprooted from metropolitan Vancouver, the Ohama family had to learn to farm the harsh Southern Alberta prairies and fight for the return of civil rights of Japanese-Canadians after the war, including the right to own land.
After finally acquiring their own farms in Rainier, Alberta, the Ohama brothers (Tona + George) proudly drove to Calgary with a truckload full of their first potato harvest – however they returned to the farm with not a single potato sold, as no one would buy Japanese potatoes. While disheartened by the prejudice, the Ohama brothers were not deterred and kept farming- eventually winning several awards for their potatoes including being named “Potato King of the World” in 1965 and recognized as pioneers of the Alberta potato industry. Over 70 years later, George Ohama’s grand-daughter Jennie Simm brought her own truckload of stuffed Japanese potatoes and spud swag to parking lots across Calgary as the heir to their royal potato lineage: the Potato Princess!
Photos by Mike Tan, Caitlind Brown, and Elyse Bouvier
Auto-Fetish
Playing on the dual meaning of “auto-fetish” (“Self Fetish” and “Fetishizing the Automobile), Auto-Fetish is a provocative performance/installation that situates an automobile engine – the mechanical heart of modern mobility – within a peepshow-style booth, inviting viewers to engage with the object as both spectacle and surrogate. The work draws a conceptual link between industrial fetishism and the erotic gaze, transforming a symbol of power, speed, and masculinity into a performer in a darkened, voyeuristic setting.
Visitors entered a dimly lit Uhaul trailer, pulling the door closed behind them. Inside the hot darkness, they peered through a window into a booth where an engine is bathed in soft, seductive lighting. A man (the artist) is lovingly cleaning the engine – spraying, wiping, and polishing the greasy device while dripping with sweat inside the hot trailer. The sound of the engine revving to life could be heard in a low throb and mechanical growl.
By placing the engine – typically hidden beneath the hood and valued for utility – into a performative, objectified context, Auto-Fetish interrogates the eroticism embedded in car culture and the way industrial objects are imbued with identity, status, and gendered desire. The peepshow format implicates the audience in an intimate act of looking, challenging them to consider their own complicity in the commodification of objects and bodies.
Photos by Mike Tan and Caitlind Brown
Funnel Vision
Our sense of compression and expansion in the vehicular landscape is created through the visual and spatial experience of transitioning between confined and spacious areas. This ever-shifting focus between our bodily enclosure within the vehicle and visual openness outside it is present when traversing vast river valleys along the highway, dipping under train lines downtown, or simply merging in and out of traffic. The primary point of negotiation between the interior and exterior is the windshield.
Funnel Vision is an extension of the windshield frame, compressing and expanding as it stretches out the back of the vehicle. Referencing camera aperture and travel trailer in its construction, the hourglass structure converges and reflects our view of the outside environment. Through this sculptural form, we might find ways to project ourselves out into the same landscape that is focused upon us.
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
Auto Body
Buckle up folks, because your cognition is no longer in the driver’s seat. Auto Body celebrates the seemingly involuntary, automatic functions of your body: the joys of burping and orgasm, uninvited skin eruptions and convulsions ~ that hiccup high you just can’t get enough of. From what deep recesses do these somatic impulses emerge? Why here? Why now? And who’s driving this thing anyways?
Artists Nikki Klawuahboe and Lane Shordee took us on a rip with this work of fart.
Thanks to Reisha for being a co-pilot, collaborator, and co-conspirator on this project!
Photos by Mike Tan, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
Slimy Scroll
Slimy Scroll is an homage to the experience of endlessly perusing the classifieds and “Buy and Sells” looking for vehicles. From the artists previous home of Whitehorse, YT, scrolling the listings in Calgary gave him a sense of wonder, painting an image of the Calgary as a land o’ plenty, a money-flush utopia where a ten year old car is considered a relic and could be scooped up for use in the Yukon. With this installation, Slimy Scroll, the viewer arrives mid-narrative into a situation where our piece’s “slime-tagonist” (slimy protagonist) is looking for a new car while present at the scene of a freshly broken down vehicle.
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Jame Tworow, and Caitlind Brown
Ride Share
Ride Share is an improvised taxi ride where anything can happen, from deep philosophical debates to unsolicited advice on how to raise goats on a balcony. It’s part confessional, part therapy, part fever dream… all jammed into a backseat with suspicious upholstery.
This live experience dives headfirst into one of life’s great modern dilemmas: do you talk to the driver, or do you pretend to be on a call with your dentist? It’s the beautiful awkward tango between driver and passenger – two strangers thrown into a moving metal box by a mysterious algorithm with no exit strategy except “end trip.”
Every backseat is a liminal space. The moment the door shuts, you’re in a parallel universe where you can be whoever you want: a retired astronaut, a llama whisperer, or just your usual introverted self in a hoodie. Meanwhile, the driver could be a part-time philosopher, a secret poet, or someone who just really, really wants to talk about cryptocurrency. You’ll probably never see each other again… which makes it the perfect place to reveal your deepest secrets or rehearse your TED Talk. Will the conversation be life-changing? Forgettable? Intensely weird? Yes. Think of it as Waiting for Godot, but in a Hyundai Elantra and with GPS yelling “recalculating.”
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
Wayside Peace Pod
What if peace was a place that came to you? Where the pan-cultural tradition of wayside shrines meets the effulgent nostalgia of a 1980 Chev Boogie van stands the artists’ weather-beaten vintage chapel on wheels, Wayside Peace Pod. A solar temple in miniature, devoted to the golden rays that guide the roadster; a hymn to the in-between, born of exhaust fumes, incense and roadside hallucinations. Peace not as a destination but as a detour. A place of reflection, ritual and rest.
Inside: offers sanctuary to the transient soul and the GPS-glitched drifter. It hums. It forgets. It remembers you in languages no longer spoken. A place of stillness where plastic flowers wilt in reverse and reflections of synthetic golden waves pray in morse code.
Outside: Nothing changes. For a moment, the road forgets it’s going somewhere. Not a destination. Not a direction. Just a pause: a pod of peace, parked in a paved paradise. An ephemeral sanctuary for anyone who’s ever wept in a rest stop or mistaken an exit ramp for salvation.
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
iini (buffalo) sounds
What did the land in Mohkinstsis (Calgary) sound like before the iini (buffalo) were displaced by the recent colonization of the Treaty 7 area? buffalo sounds returns the iini to Mohkinstsis by broadcasting the radio recorded sounds of their voices and dreamy ambient soundscapes using a pirate radio powered by a borrowed Ford F-150.
The buffalo voices come from Montana where seth’s dad takes care of them near his home on the Blackfeet Nation. Thanks to seth’s mom and brother for joining the motorcade as co-pilots!
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
Tam’s Express
Have you ever wondered what your fast-food order says about who you are? Whether in a rush or struck with a sudden craving, you reveal a part of yourself when you’re at the mercy of the question, “what can I get for you?” Are you steadfast in your decisions, or does the novelty of something new lure you? At TAM’S Express, our selections will guide you to ordering the combo meal that best suits who you are. We guarantee you will leave surprised and delighted by our offerings. Walk on thru, place an order, and enjoy the combos we have prepared just for you!
Photos by Mike Tan, Allison Seto, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
Altar Nature
Altar Nature is a car-based installation drawing parallels between historic pagan animal sacrifice and contemporary roadkill. Visitors were invited to offer the sacrifice of an animal they’d already hit with their car by adding an animal-crossing sign to the scene.
Roadways are intersections for deep misunderstandings between human beings and the animal world. Most animals did not evolve to understand the motivations of motor vehicles or how they move across the landscape, and this confusion is deadly. Road Ecologists estimate that between 1 and 5 million vertebrates die from vehicular strike every day; a car kills a mammal every 30 seconds in the United States alone. We humans bisect the land with highways and byways, erecting our cathedrals of car infrastructure, and paying little attention to the impact of lost habitat, free movement, and migratory paths on other living beings…
But cars are just so dang convenient. Some might even say that the sacrifice of hundreds of millions of wild animals a year is a small price to pay for the miracle of car-based mobility. In fact, isn’t it time we recognized the Gods of Automotive Convenience with their own place of worship? Altar Nature invited us to consider what (and who) we’re willing to sacrifice to get where we’re going, fast.
~ With thanks to Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb.
Photos by Mike Tan, Elyse Bouvier, and Caitlind Brown
~ Eternal Thanks ~
… to the Artists and Photographers, Gail Garden, seth’s Mom & brother, Taylor Poitras & the CADA crew, CJSW, Adam Kamis, Chad Saunders, Noel Begin, Nikki Emerson & Bin Diver, Joe Kelly, Dale Meyer & Veronica Murphy, Clare Duckett, the Ohama Family, Ramin’s folks, Steve and Noor at Global Wide, our partners and Moms, and all the co-pilots and support systems keeping our collective tires on the road. Thanks to all the sweet folks, both friends and strangers, who came to check out the show!
The streets, parking lots, and highways of Calgary are located on the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7 in Southern Alberta, which includes the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina First Nation, the Stoney Nakoda, and the Metis Nation of Alberta, Districts 5 & 6. Roads and car infrastructure has had profound impacts on the landscape and displaced many Indigenous communities in this region, past and present. As we drive Deerfoot, Crowchild, Tsuut’ina Trail, and other highways, we acknowledge how these roads came to be named for the histories they were often attempting to pave over. We share these roads with gratitude for the land beneath and a share responsibility for better routes ahead.
IDLE WORSHIP was funded by Calgary Arts Development Authority. Community Partners included EMMEDIA and Big Kitty Magazine.
IDLE WORSHIP was organized by local artists Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett as a spinoff of The Hibernation Project.
Check out IDLE WORSHIP 2022 here.
Check out our 2021 Car Show Prototype here.
THE HIBERNATION PROJECT 