Kid Xanthrax (Canadian, b. 1994) is the pseudonym of Michael Whitehead, a digital artist working across video, collage, drawing, sculpture, music production, and blockchain-based art.,Working in a self-described “ghorecore” style,he appropriates memes, advertising imagery, and avant-garde art gestures into grotesque, meme-inflected work that collapses the distinction between low and high culture.
He studied animation at St. Clair College in Windsor from 2014 to 2017 before developing his pseudonymous online practice.His first solo exhibition, “TFW Too Intelligent”, opened in 2019 at the PAF International Contemporary Art and Film Festival in Olomouc, Czech Republic, presenting Goya paintings reinterpreted through Google's DeepDream algorithm.,In 2020 he presented “Nuclear Expressionism”, a non-permissive happening staged at a defunct public washroom in Toronto and curated by Plastique Famille.
In 2022 he presented “#SLIPGNOSIS” with Baris Cavusoglu at BSMNT Gallery in Leipzig, Germany. His work has also appeared in group exhibitions including “The Digital Weird” at Arebyte Gallery in London and “Hyperréalité Des Émotions” at the Museum of Naïve Art in Paris, both in 2021. In 2025 he took part in “Profile Pictures ($POPE)” with Parker Ito at Nguyen Wahed in New York.He has received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, including a $25,000 Explore & Create award in 2023, and lives and works in Montreal.,
