L (Lani Zastre) was born in 1980 in Winnipeg, but grew up in Alberta. She loved drawing and creating as soon as she could pick up a pencil. After a 12-year break and a period of trauma, she re-started her art in earnest three years ago.

Meanwhile, she had studied art history; earned a BSW degree and trained in Disability studies; worked
as a social worker; and owned Dregs, a café and gallery in Osborne Village that attracted local writers, artists, and musicians. L participates in community organizations like Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba and has a permanent series of work hanging at Chicago’s Awakenings Foundation Gallery, which promotes artistic expression by sexual violence survivors.

Tyler Genaille, with roots in the Berens River (Miimiiwiziibiing) and Duck Bay (Anishinabek) First Nations, was born in 2000 in Winnipeg. He started drawing stick figures at age five, and never stopped developing his self-taught art.

Tyler produces sharply satirical pieces, finely drawn in pen and pencil crayon on paper with the goal of achieving a “goofy Scoobie-Doo” look, but darker. He cites as influences Cree artist Kent Monkman and US artist and social critic Michael D’Antuono, whose “Tale of Two Hoodies” directly inspired Tyler’s Canadian version, “The Tale of Two Uniforms.”

“When I’m happy, I draw funny, but when I’m justifiably angry, I draw angry,” he says. As many of his individual pieces tell a story, he has also turned out home-made comic books in a similar style. In his passion for social justice, Tyler – proudly two-spirited – is not afraid to confront racism, sexism, and homophobia directly, and to take parody to logical extremes that shock some casual audiences. For example, he uses Klan hoods not only to telegraph toxic racism, but also to stand for the hiding of one’s identity. “I get that the RCMP are not the Klan,” Tyler explains, “but I draw parallels because the institution has a dark history in Canada and at least some officers share an underlying prejudice and willingness to abuse power.”

Tyler Genaille

Indigenous Veterans Day, 2025

Pencil on Paper

15″ x 20.5″

Tyler Genaille

Scooby-Heart, 2023

Pencil on Paper

8.75″ x 11.5″

L. Zastre

Untitled VI, 2022

Pencil on Archival Paper

12″ x 16.5″

NFS