Artist Statement
"My practice begins with a question the body is holding that the mind hasn’t yet formed.
For years I examined the body as a site of accumulated history — the residue of intergenerational wounds, inherited roles, the ways dominance and disconnection inscribe themselves on a cellular level. Working across painting, collage, sculpture, performance, and film, I look for the origins of human separation: from ourselves, from each other, from the natural world.
That inquiry has led me inward. My current series, Impermanence Sucks, Thank God for Impermanence, uses my own postmenopausal body as primary material — photographed, painted over, cut, ripped, reassembled, multiplied. The physical process is the conceptual argument: forms change, but nothing ever dies. What I do to the image mirrors what life does to the self. Seams and scars stay visible.
I am drawn to paradox — in subject matter and in method. I work with techniques that allow uncontrolled outcomes within carefully composed structures. I use writing, paint, and the body itself as tools of inquiry rather than illustration. The work is never a conclusion. It is a process of finding out.
Art, for me, is what happens when private experience becomes a commons. The questions I bring to the studio — about connection, vulnerability, impermanence, freedom — are not unique to me. That is why they need to be asked out loud.
BIO
Gabriela Hirt is a German-Canadian interdisciplinary artist currently based in Berlin. Her practice spans mixed media, painting, sculpture, performance, and film — united by a sustained inquiry into the body as the site where personal and collective histories are inscribed, held, and transformed.
With a background in journalism and a Master of Arts in Political Science, Hirt brings a rigorous conceptual framework to work that is nonetheless material and somatic. Her series The Indelible Mark, Storied Bodies and Erinnerungskörper established her as a painter of bodies under pressure — figures shaped by memory, loss, and the possibility of release. Her new body of work, Impermanence Sucks, Thank God for Impermanence, turns that inquiry inward and intimate, using her own aging body as primary material.
Notable exhibitions include solo shows across British Columbia and Berlin, a residency at SomoS Art Space funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, and screenings of her short art film Storied Bodies at Berlin Short Film Festival and F Festival, Ballhaus Prinzenallee, Berlin.
Solo Exhibitions
CV
Erinnerungskörper — The Body as a Memory Keeper, performance, paintings & sculptures, SomoS Art Space, Berlin, March 2024
Storied Bodies, (extended) paintings & sculptures, Gibsons Public Art Gallery, Gibsons, BC, January 2023
Dancers, online-solo show of new paintings, Artwrk.ca, May/June 2023
Storied Bodies, paintings & sculptures, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, Sept/Oct 2022
The Indelible Mark, paintings, interactive sculpture & mosaic installation, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, March 2021
8 min & 46 sec, solo pop up window-installation addressing discrimination and racism, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC 2020
Interdisciplinary Projects
Impermanence Sucks, Thank god for Impermanence, mixed media photography series, in production, based on a collaboration with Silvia Montevecchi, Finland, 2024 — ongoing
Storied Bodies, 5-minutes Short film with Tabea Antonacci, Marie Elise Hufnagel, Hameed Al Saeed, Hannah Wolny and Baris Kutlu, Berlin, March 2025
Erinnerungskörper, contemporary dance performance with paintings based on 3 months research with Marie Elise Hufnagel and Tabea Antonacci, SomoS, Berlin, March 2024
Reise: A Poetic History of German Missionaries and First Nation Australians, poetry reading by Wiradjury poet Alison J. Barton, presenting some of the language-infused paintings we collaborated on, and Q&A moderated by Australian curator, Nicole Beck, SomoS, Berlin, Feb. 2024
Private Party, collaborative sculpture with driftwood artist, Tanya Bub, Victoria, BC, 2021
Selected Group Exhibitions
Berlin Short Film Festival, Babylon Cinema, Berlin, Germany, 2026
F Festival, Feminist Futures, Forgotten (Hi)stories, Ballhaus Prinzenallee, Berlin, 2026
Electric Bloom, Chromatic Fragments, Juror Anastasia Tsaparoglou, Lite-Haus Galerie, Berlin, 2026
Haze.untitled Vol 001, Q Gallery, Berlin, 2024
Liberty & Sovereignty, 13th International Annual Juried Exhibition —Juror, Jamie Isaac, Chief Curator Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Gallery 110, Seattle, USA, 2023
TD Gallery Paint-In, juried community event, interactive public sculpture installation, Art Gallery Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC, 2023
Immigration, group-show of 9 artists — Juror, George Harris, artistic Director (artist fee received), Two Rivers Gallery, Prince George, BC, August 4 to October 9, 2023
Inside Out, 3-artists exhibition, Art@Bentall GAllery, Vancouver, BC, 2022
Sooke Fine Arts Show, Sooke, BC, 2022, 2021, 2019
Memorial. Monument. Movement. Artagainstracism.org, NJ, USA, 2021
Summer Small Works Show, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2021
Somewhere in Time, Federation of Canadian Artists, Victoria, BC, 2021
Abstracted, Federationgallery, Vancouver, BC, 2021
CLWAC 123rd Exhibition of Women's Art, The National Arts Club, New York City, USA 2020
Winter Small Works Show, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC, 2020, 2019
Inside Out, three women artists exhibition, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, 2020
Crisis, Federationgallery, Vancouver, BC, 2020
Looking in-Looking Out, Federation of Canadian Artists, Victoria, BC, 2020
Challenge Crisis with Creativity, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, 2020
Summer Show & Sale, Victoria Arts Council, juried, Victoria, BC, 2020
TD Gallery Paint-In, juried community art event, AGGV, Victoria, BC, 2019
Solstice Dreams—The Poetry of Winter, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, 2019
All Planet Earth Art Exhibition, Contemporary Art Gallery, Online, juried, 2019
The Oak Bay Studio Tour,Oak Bay, BC, 2019
Sidney Fine Arts Show, Sidney, BC, juried, 2019, 2018
Grants, Awards & Residencies
Winner of Best Original Score, Vancouver Women’s Festival (Monthly Awards) for short film Storied Bodies, January 2026
The Ou Gallery, artist residency, Vancouver Island, Canada, May 2026
Hub Feenix, artist residency, Finland, October 2024
SomoS Art Space, artist residency, Berlin, January to March, 2024
Canada Council for the Arts -- artist grant for residency at SomoS including travel, collaborative performance and video project with budget for dancers and videographer, 2024
Community & Curatorial Art Projects
The Postcard Climate Project&Show—Community Visions of Sustainability, international participation of 600 artists, lead-organizer with another artist, Gage Gallery, Victoria, BC, exhibition February/March 2022
Challenge Crisis with Creativity— our Community coping with Covid through Art project & show, 300 pieces of art/120 participants, lead organizer, Gallery, Victoria, BC, April to June, 2020
Workshops and other Professional Activities
Zen Meets Creative, weekend-workshop exploring mindfulness practices and authentic painting in collaboration with Dr. Phil. Xiaoqing Xu, therapist and lecturer, Berlin, at Kulturhaus Steinfurth, Karlsburg, Germany, September 11–14, 2025
Playful Painting, painting workshop at Plum Village Monastery, France, 2023
Storied Bodies art-catalogue with essay by historian and author Rachel Hope Cleve, January 2023
The Necessity of Taking Risks, art workshop, Opus Live Art Series, Victoria, BC, February 2020
Education
MA Political Science from LMU University, Munich, Germany
Early Career
Worked 20 years in journalism for German publications and book projects
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