A bright red, embroidered heart-shaped soft sculpture with many spidery legs, accompanied by two pairs of light-skinned hands showering it with affection.
Wormshop Birdie Gerhl
Curated by Abedar Kamgari
Hamilton Artists Inc. 155 James St N., Hamilton, ON September 6 – October 28, 2023
Where our edges touch, there are long, long dreams…
Here, worms of all shapes and sizes crawl across a landscape of work benches and dining tables. Their flesh is cobbled together using mismatched, recycled bits of fabric, and lovingly adorned in textural flowers, embroidery, and patchwork. The worms are not fixed creatures, but constantly making, unmaking, and remaking themselves as they move towards the Crip Horizon. The Crip Horizon is a term coined by Sean Lee that imagines possible futures for disabled people who, among many others, have been promised no future within the existing social order.
Through her ever-in-progress textile art practice, artist Birdie Gerhl maps the Crip Horizon not as a future dreamscape but in its current presence with all our messy tryings and failings and longings. Over the course of two months, Birdie will transform the Inc.’s Cannon Gallery into her studio (read: Wormshop), continuing to work on the pieces onsite. The project brings together tactile sculpture and audio description as a medium, through video, vibrotactile experiences, and zines. Birdie’s ongoing work at the wormshop imagines a world where her labour as a disabled person is more visible.
Nestled among the worms, Birdie includes books and other references to the human and non-human relations who comprise her disabled lineage. Birdie cites people whose names we know as well as those whose wisdom is documented unconventionally, or written out of archives altogether.
We welcome you to the wormshop. Please make yourself comfortable, make noise, and feel free to touch.
Auxiliary Programming:
Super Crawl Extended gallery hours between September 8-10
Suicide Intervention for Weirdos, Freaks, and Queers Thursday, October 26 from 7:00-8:30pm (in-person)
This is an invitation into conversation about the pre-recorded webinar and “helping your friends who sometimes wanna die maybe not die” zine about anti-carceral suicide intervention made by me — Carly Boyce. Those materials are an invitation to build and consider skills around supporting people who are suicidal (including ourselves, if relevant!). They seek to expose commonly held myths around suicide and suicide support, as well as naming and describing some skills that might be helpful in witnessing, supporting, or otherwise allying with people who sometimes want to die (or don’t know how to keep living).
In this Q&A, you will be invited to ask questions that came up for you while engaging with either the zine or webinar (or both if you’re ambitious). They can be theoretical or practical in nature. I am not an expert, and may not have decisive answers to your questions, but can share my own knowledge as well as skills, tools, ideas, and experiences that I have the honour to be a steward of, since holding circles around suicide support for many years with many skilled and wise humans. Folks in the room will also be invited to participate in answering the questions, as I know there is always a great deal of wisdom and experience in a group that gathers to deal with this fraught topic. You’re also welcome to attend and just listen; no specific forms of participation are required.
Contemporary Art Bus Tour Saturday, October 21, 11:00am-5:00pm
The Art Gallery of Burlington, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, Hamilton Artists Inc. and Tangled Art + Disability offer a free bus tour of their fall exhibitions. The day starts at Tangled in Toronto, before departing for stops in Burlington and Hamilton, and returning to Tangled at 5pm. At Hamilton Artists Inc., Birdie Gerhl and Abedar Kamgari will read poetry and writings that influenced their ideas within the exhibition, and invite an audience Q&A.
Image descriptions in alt text. Photos by Eli Nolet.
Birdie Gerhl is a practitioner of longing. As a multidisciplinary artist based in Hamilton, ON, Birdie searches the complicated and clumsy space between bodies. She locates disability and difference in relationship, rather than isolating it within the body or in identity. Her work understands that crip kinship can be chosen or blood, human or non-human, ancestral or material, and disabled or not. Birdie’s work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Windsor-Essex, Centre[3], Hamilton Artists Inc. and Tangled Art + Disability. She was awarded the 2019 Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency and the 2021 Centre[3] Emerging Artist Residency. Birdie was one of the inaugural Artists-in-Residence / Gallery Assistants at Hamilton Artists Inc. throughout 2020-21. Birdie also slung zines at the 2022 Hamilton Zineposium. Birdie’s instagram is @birdie_gerhl
A heartfelt thank you to our programming partners, Tangled Art + Disability. The artist acknowledges the funding support of the Ontario Arts Council.
Wormshop
A bright red, embroidered heart-shaped soft sculpture with many spidery legs, accompanied by two pairs of light-skinned hands showering it with affection.
Wormshop
Birdie Gerhl
Curated by Abedar Kamgari
Hamilton Artists Inc.
155 James St N., Hamilton, ON
September 6 – October 28, 2023
Where our edges touch, there are long, long dreams…
Here, worms of all shapes and sizes crawl across a landscape of work benches and dining tables. Their flesh is cobbled together using mismatched, recycled bits of fabric, and lovingly adorned in textural flowers, embroidery, and patchwork. The worms are not fixed creatures, but constantly making, unmaking, and remaking themselves as they move towards the Crip Horizon. The Crip Horizon is a term coined by Sean Lee that imagines possible futures for disabled people who, among many others, have been promised no future within the existing social order.
Through her ever-in-progress textile art practice, artist Birdie Gerhl maps the Crip Horizon not as a future dreamscape but in its current presence with all our messy tryings and failings and longings. Over the course of two months, Birdie will transform the Inc.’s Cannon Gallery into her studio (read: Wormshop), continuing to work on the pieces onsite. The project brings together tactile sculpture and audio description as a medium, through video, vibrotactile experiences, and zines. Birdie’s ongoing work at the wormshop imagines a world where her labour as a disabled person is more visible.
Nestled among the worms, Birdie includes books and other references to the human and non-human relations who comprise her disabled lineage. Birdie cites people whose names we know as well as those whose wisdom is documented unconventionally, or written out of archives altogether.
We welcome you to the wormshop. Please make yourself comfortable, make noise, and feel free to touch.
Auxiliary Programming:
Super Crawl
Extended gallery hours between September 8-10
Suicide Intervention for Weirdos, Freaks, and Queers
Thursday, October 26 from 7:00-8:30pm (in-person)
This is an invitation into conversation about the pre-recorded webinar and “helping your friends who sometimes wanna die maybe not die” zine about anti-carceral suicide intervention made by me — Carly Boyce. Those materials are an invitation to build and consider skills around supporting people who are suicidal (including ourselves, if relevant!). They seek to expose commonly held myths around suicide and suicide support, as well as naming and describing some skills that might be helpful in witnessing, supporting, or otherwise allying with people who sometimes want to die (or don’t know how to keep living).
In this Q&A, you will be invited to ask questions that came up for you while engaging with either the zine or webinar (or both if you’re ambitious). They can be theoretical or practical in nature. I am not an expert, and may not have decisive answers to your questions, but can share my own knowledge as well as skills, tools, ideas, and experiences that I have the honour to be a steward of, since holding circles around suicide support for many years with many skilled and wise humans. Folks in the room will also be invited to participate in answering the questions, as I know there is always a great deal of wisdom and experience in a group that gathers to deal with this fraught topic. You’re also welcome to attend and just listen; no specific forms of participation are required.
Contemporary Art Bus Tour
Saturday, October 21, 11:00am-5:00pm
The Art Gallery of Burlington, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, Hamilton Artists Inc. and Tangled Art + Disability offer a free bus tour of their fall exhibitions. The day starts at Tangled in Toronto, before departing for stops in Burlington and Hamilton, and returning to Tangled at 5pm. At Hamilton Artists Inc., Birdie Gerhl and Abedar Kamgari will read poetry and writings that influenced their ideas within the exhibition, and invite an audience Q&A.
Image descriptions in alt text. Photos by Eli Nolet.
Birdie Gerhl is a practitioner of longing. As a multidisciplinary artist based in Hamilton, ON, Birdie searches the complicated and clumsy space between bodies. She locates disability and difference in relationship, rather than isolating it within the body or in identity. Her work understands that crip kinship can be chosen or blood, human or non-human, ancestral or material, and disabled or not. Birdie’s work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Windsor-Essex, Centre[3], Hamilton Artists Inc. and Tangled Art + Disability. She was awarded the 2019 Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency and the 2021 Centre[3] Emerging Artist Residency. Birdie was one of the inaugural Artists-in-Residence / Gallery Assistants at Hamilton Artists Inc. throughout 2020-21. Birdie also slung zines at the 2022 Hamilton Zineposium. Birdie’s instagram is @birdie_gerhl
A heartfelt thank you to our programming partners, Tangled Art + Disability. The artist acknowledges the funding support of the Ontario Arts Council.