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Birdie Gerhl lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario and is a graduate of the Visual and Creative Arts program at Sheridan College. She has exhibited in group shows at Sheridan College, at the Durham Art Gallery, and in Art Spin Toronto’s 2018 project Holding Patterns. In 2019, she was awarded Tangled Art + Disability’s Won Lee Fellowship, and the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency. Body Farm is Birdie’s first solo exhibition.
Is that a mushroom, or her “peen”? Is that a pile of leaves or a pile of bones? Is that the “trunk” of the body? Birdie queers the human body by combining it with forms from nature to create what she calls “soft body horror”—a mythology of monsters that describe her story. Birdie’s story sits at a largely neglected intersection: she is an autistic, trans person who inherited a complicated history of intergenerational trauma. Her grotesque guardians express how she makes meaning, through a gaze that is queer, trauma-informed, and on the spectrum.
Through the many eyes (or lack thereof) in the “soft body horror” world, which worms its way to you through the Body Farm, Birdie reframes the loneliness, disquiet, and grief that result from the tangled intersecting parts of who she is. This way of seeing embraces the in-between places, and the places outside the scales on which she has been taught to place importance and meaning. “Soft body horror” gives Birdie space to begin re-experiencing her story in bits and pieces, in a greater context of awe, humour, and hope.
On a bright orange and red horizon, three fingers stretch across the canvas as jellyfish-like creatures swirl between and around them. In the top left corner, three teal shapes like tree trunks extend off the page, their roots intertwining to form a net around a brown piece of earth.Against a deep blue and black sky, two creatures are flying by, one appearing to chase the other. The creature being chased is caught in the light of a bright moon sinking on the horizon. The creature in the foreground is surrounded by many speech bubbles, each repeating the word “NO”.The painting features disjointed torsos and limbs, each appearing as if they are growing, or carved from, thick tree trunks. In the top left corner, a crow perches atop one of these. The body parts are floating above a swirling background in orange, grey, and green.In the painting in the centre of the image, a hand extends from the top left corner, fingertips glowing. It is covered in hairlike tubular protrusions that resemble cilia. The hand is reaching towards a green monster that sits in the bottom right corner, whose neck forks into two tubes that seem to sprout glowing branches. In the top right corner, words have been cut and pasted onto the canvas, reading “ME RELEASE RELEASE ME ME RELEASE RELEASE ME ME RELEASE RELEASE ME ME”.In the centre of the image is a drawing; in it, a headless human figure with pale skin kneels in the center of the page against a sky-blue background. Their impossibly stretched neck stretches off the page and is severed in two, and long fleshy tree branches grow from their nipples. A ring of small nippled orbs, like disembodied breasts, floats around the figure, streaked here and there with colour.In the center of the image is a square of white paper with a handwritten entry that reads, “CAPTAIN’S LOG: MARCH 19TH 2018. You check your samples for an answer. Every day, you turn your petri dish over, hoping for the reply you’ve been waiting for. Today the petri dish says ‘you owe 2,537,628 minutes in the Crying Room.’ You try to make a crying face, and nothing comes out. All the water is on an overflowing shelf somewhere, in empty peanut butter jars, collecting minutes. You scramble the petri dish with your swab and turn it over again.” The painting in the centre of the image features dripping orange text that reads “YOU OWE 2,537,629 MINUTES IN THE CRYING ROOM”. The text is painted on a blue background.The painting in the centre of the image depicts a chaotic scene, featuring a large purple hand hand clutching a smooth stone-like object with a human eye on it. On top of the stone, a nude, headless humanoid creature is lying on their back, knees up as if preparing to give birth. A blue-cloaked raven is watching the scene, holding a bouquet of white flowers. Across the top of the page are the words “WHAT’S GROWING?” written in all capitals, sperm cells swimming around the letters.In the drawing in the centre of the image, an orange hand extends across the page. The wrist ends in soft, peeling yellow layers, like petals or cabbage, revealing a forked branch at the center like a tree branch or artery. The background is deep green lines that seem to flow around the hand at the centre. The drawing at the centre of the image features a school of jellyfish-like creatures on a piece of lined paper. Their heads, pointing down as if swimming deeper, are irregularly shaped balls covered in tiny hairs. Two long red tendrils curl from each head, like veins or coral, twisting around each other like a DNA helix. A headless purple figure kneels on a blue and green background. They have sagging breasts that each end in a bright blue eye. A long cord, like intestines or veins, extends from the eye on the right, looping around to a white box that reads “I WILL EXAMINE YOU”.A coloured pencil drawing of two monsters facing each other while kelp-like tendrils sway around them. The monsters’ necks and limbs end in tube-like protrusions. Worm shaped tongues poke out from the tubes at the end of each monster’s neck, reaching and twining towards each other. The monster in the foreground has a speech bubble floating above it that reads “WANNA SEE MY BUTT?”A painting of a yellow monster with human fingers in place of its head and all four limbs flying across a star-studded landscape. A second headless monster of the same shade of yellow is riding on its back, tube-like arms stretched behind it, and it is difficult to discern where one monster ends and the other begins.The center of the image features a black-and-white line drawing of two monsters having a conversation in a swampy area near a culvert drain. They appear to be looking at a long cylindrical tube lying across the ground in front of them, though neither monster has a discernable face. The lumpier monster standing in the background has a speech bubble that reads “WHAT IS IT?”, while the tube-necked monster crouching in the foreground has a speech bubble that reads “A MONSTER”.In the center of the image is a square of white paper with a handwritten entry that reads, “CAPTAIN’S LOG: MARCH 30TH 2018. Today you finally decide to follow the unrelenting humming sound. You travel until the Celestial Body starts to come out and you are enveloped in twilight. As the humming grows stonger, you find yourself getting itchy. You say to yourself
you followed me like dust
kicked up every time I cleaned
the more I wiped
the more you came together
The humming noise takes you to The Party, where many monsters have gathered to dance. You notice that they are really good dancers! The monsters vibrate in sync, their rapid movements almost undetectable. All the vibrating gives you a headache. Will you join them?” The image features many drawings from Birdie’s “Body Farm” show, arranged haphazardly on a white wall at Tangled Art + Disability. Some of the drawings are in full colour, while others are grayscale pencil drawings. The pieces mostly feature uncanny fusions of body and nature – limbs that end in coral-like tubes here, a few disembodied ears there. Some of the pieces feature text; one reads “TO BE GIVEN A BODY”.A photo of Birdie’s large sculpture, “Big Softie and the Unidentified Remains”, shot from above. Big Softie is a puffy, many-limbed creature who fills two table-tops, made of a patchwork of fabric, buttons, and thread. Big Softie is surrounded by irregularly shaped pieces of smooth brown clay, collectively called the Unidentified Remains.A close-up, birds-eye-view image of “Big Softie”, a massive stuffed fabric sculpture with long, puffy tubes in various colours and patterns that tangle and stretch across the table they are lying on. A bright red cartoonish heart lies at the center of the frame. Big Softie is surrounded by irregularly shaped pieces of smooth brown clay, collectively called the “Unidentified Remains”. Four light-skinned hands reach into the frame, patting and squeezing Big Softie’s aptly named limbs.In the center of the image is a square of white paper with a handwritten entry that reads, “CAPTAIN’S LOG: OCTOBER 16TH, 2019. ‘Release me…’ Big Softie whispers weakly from beneath a pile of what can only be classified as Unidentified Remains. As you pick up a few of the Remains, which cover your fingers in a fine dust, he reaches out one of his lumpy limbs. You give him a firm handshake and something lets out a sharp ‘squeak!’ Beneath his thin skin, you feel the contours of a squishy dog toy. You examine each piece of the Remains as you place them aside. Vertebrae, icebergs, mushrooms, nipples, and every manner of peen pass through your hands. Is Big Softie laying under a pile of leaves, or a pile of bones? As you unearth him, you realize Big Softie must be twice your height, at least. You wonder if you’re helping a fellow adventurer, or triggering a boss fight. Will you continue to remove the remains?” The log sits beside a lumpy fabric limb of Birdie’s sculpture, “Big Softie”.An image of the gallery at Tangled Art + Disability during Birdie’s “Body Farm” exhibition. Between two wooden support beams hangs a sculpture of soft, pale, patchwork letters. It casts a shadow on the wall, revealing the words: “RELEASE ME”. Two people dressed in black stand facing the wall, apparently listening to something through headphones attached to small grey boxes mounted on the wall.A wide shot of a white-walled gallery room filled with pieces from Birdie’s “Body Farm” exhibition. Two white tables sit in the center of the room, covered with the many pieces of two interwoven sculptures: the lumpy fabric of “Big Softie”, and the smooth brown clay of the Unidentified Remains. Another fabric sculpture hangs between two wooden support beams behind them, letters that spell out, “RELEASE ME”, casting a shadow on the wall behind. Various paintings hang on the wall. A shot of a white-walled gallery room filled with pieces from Birdie’s “Body Farm” exhibition. Two white tables sit in the center of the room, visible between two support beams. The tables are covered with the many pieces of two interwoven sculptures: the lumpy fabric of “Big Softie”, and the smooth brown clay of the “Unidentified Remains”. On the far wall, text and video (playing on two mounted TVs) introduce the exhibition. A stuffed fabric sculpture hangs between the support beams: the words “RELEASE ME” shot from behind. An image shot from the corner of a white-walled gallery room filled with pieces from Birdie’s “Body Farm” exhibition. Two white tables sit in the center of the room, covered with the many pieces of two interwoven sculptures: the lumpy fabric of Big Softie, and the smooth brown clay of the Unidentified Remains. Another fabric sculpture hangs between two wooden support beams behind them, letters that spell out, “RELEASE ME”, and casting a shadow on the wall behind. Various paintings hang on the wall.
This work was produced with the support of the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency and Steel City Studio.
Images by Michelle Peek Photography courtesy of Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology & Access to Life, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice at the University of Guelph. Artwork by Birdie Gerhl from the Body Farm exhibition at Tangled Art + Disability.
