John Jarboe ‘ate’ her twin in the womb. She can’t stop thinking about it.
The “John Jarboe: The Rose Garden” is a poignant, absurd, and visually enthralling exhibit at the Fabric Workshop and Museum.
John Jarboe, the charismatic founder and artistic director of Philly’s Bearded Ladies Cabaret, has been mulling over a conversation she had with her aunt for years now.
“You know, John, you had a twin in the womb,” Jarboe’s aunt told her. “You ate her. That’s why you are the way you are,” she said, referring to Jarboe’s trans identity.
In the years since, Jarboe has alchemized that surreal declaration into a multimedia exploration of gender, grief, and queer-becoming, first in a play that premiered at the Fringe Festival last year which is currently touring in Washington, D.C. And now in a poignant, absurd, and visually enthralling exhibit at the Fabric Workshop and Museum.
“John Jarboe: The Rose Garden,” which opened in May and continues through September, is a tactile journey through Jarboe’s imaginative preoccupations. Along with a team at the museum, Jarboe collaborated with video and sound designer Christopher Ash and lighting designer Kate McGee for an impressive series of video installations that create a disarmingly fun, enlightening experience. Because of its interactive elements, only six visitors can walk through at a time.
“It’s very weird for me to have people line up to go on a journey that I avoided so hard,” Jarboe said. “I’m very proud of Chris and Kate and myself, and the team at the Fabric Workshop, for saying yes to a lot, and allowing it to be this lush.”
Jarboe said she hoped the show would feel like a “cabinet of curiosities,” collections of fascinating, exotic objects in 16th-century Europe that served as precursors to the modern museum.
“Growing up queer in the Midwest, there are a lot of questions to chew on. I thought I dealt with them all: Is this nature? Is this nurture? Was this the childhood ballet?” Jarboe asks in one of the exhibit’s opening video installations. “But you never really feel like you’re gonna ask: Was this cannibalism?”
Rose, the would-be name of Jarboe’s vanished twin, is both everywhere and nowhere in the show. An “artist’s bio” so long that it spills onto the floor explains: “Rose was not born in 1986 in Michigan … Normally that would end a career, but for Rose this was just the beginning!!”
Fetuses — on offer in vegan chocolate form, displayed in teacups that visitors use to activate technical aspects of the show, and printed on Sound of Music-inspired clothing and decor — are a recurring motif throughout. Jarboe wanted visitors to be prompted to eat a fetus, like she apparently once did.
“I’m not trying to anthropomorphize a fetus. I’m trying to be campy and silly and laugh at it — but also really invest in the metaphor,” Jarboe said.
In one room, visitors sit on toilets and pick up phones to hear audio from a video projected onto shower curtains, evoking the classic horror film Psycho. (“For some reason, film looks so good on a shower curtain. It holds my attention more because of the weirdness of it,” said Jarboe.)
Another room, the all-white “Mother’s Closet,” is a site of both exploration and anxiety, as a video appears in a vanity mirror, then explodes onto the surrounding walls. An original song, composed by Daniel de Jesús with Jarboe’s lyrics, repeats the alarmingly twisted adage, “I will not disobey Mom.” Jarboe infuses the show with devastating truths about growing up in a conservative household without ever losing the sense of euphoria she feels from having survived it.
Elsewhere, an “evidence wall” features deeply personal items that Jarboe has kept from childhood, strung together on faux umbilical cords that begin with her parents’ quite conventional baby book. Ziploc-bags, as if from a crime scene, hold detailed labels: “silk blouse worn to Michigan Ren Faire age 14 / worn with black eyeliner / suspect claimed to try to ‘fit in,’” one reads.
Finding the videos becomes a scavenger hunt, with some screens hidden in drawers and others only visible through peepholes in shoeboxes with renamed brands (Trans instead of Vans; JCPansy for JCPenney). An old photograph of Jarboe’s mother shows her pregnant belly cut out to reveal a rose-headed person sipping tea.
Despite the role her family of origin plays in the exhibit, Jarboe said she does not expect her parents to come see it.
“I mean, if they sneak in, it’s of their own accord,” she said. “They’re not asking questions.”
Jarboe envisions the final room in the exhibit — “The Green Room” — as a community space, where people can spend time even without visiting the show. Market Blooms at Reading Terminal Market donates fresh flowers every week and Philly AIDS Thrift donated clothing for a “Take a Gender/Leave a Gender” station, for anyone thinking “wow, I’m feeling something and I really need a hat,” she explained.
Following her Fringe performance and the exhibit’s opening, Jarboe described three fan groups she heard from in particular: “queerdos,” moms and guardians, and people who have vanishing twin stories.
One nonbinary visitor told her that it was “really affirming to their gender journey,” she said. “That is the proof of concept that I’m hoping for.”
“John Jarboe: The Rose Garden” runs through Sept. 29 at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch St., Phila., Pa. 215-561-8888 or fabricworkshopandmuseum.org.