ART STATEMENT

Bert Gilbert’s iterative, cross-disciplinary practice conjures esoteric mystery rituals, folkloric storytelling and somatic resonance. Her work is designed to invoke and embody liminal thresholds, examining how they are crossed, by whom, and under what conditions. She explores the aesthetics of trauma and transformation as conduits for reconnection, with the self, the earth, and the collective unconscious.

Her aim is to transform the wound.

Using the narrative and haptic qualities of materials, the work seeks to re-embody, re-enchant, and restore the ruins of our archaic histories. It is an act of remembrance, rekindling lost connections between human perception and the sentience of the natural world, communicated through a mycelium-like network of mixed media. Her practice is kinetic and obsessive, unfolding on a cosmic time frame and deeply engaged with altered states of being. Through a contemporary reinterpretation of primordial cosmologies, she reveals the esoteric as a form of mundane magic, one that collides with the everyday through myth, trauma, and transcendence

In-depth research and immersive fieldwork with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon and the Atacama Desert in Chile have expanded her exploration of bridging ancient cosmologies with understandings of heart-brain coherence and collective connection. Gilbert employs somatic shadow work to overcome biological, spiritual, and psychological trauma, which she recodifies into an infrastructure of portals activated by the audience's sensory perception alongside universal elements.

Forging a visceral, fearless language of queered, hybrid symbologies, infused with humour, where rapture meets taboo, and materials speak in tongues. She sees the artist as a sensor, translating whispers of the unseen into a language the body remembers. (Sometimes, these are screams.)

She has shown internationally since 2006, most recently, a site specific work, The Vesica was shown at Somerset House, London and has a ongoing collaborative practice:The Sinistry with artist Izzet Ers