Fabric Workshop & Museum presents 'John Jarboe: The Rose Garden' through Sept. 29

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Artist John Jarboe invites you to dig in the garden she's created for her first solo museum exhibition called The Rose Garden.

DJ Hellerman, Chief Curator for The Fabric Workshop and Museum, says she has turned it into an interactive, immersive space.

"The Rose Garden aims to be the best parts of an escape room or theme park ride, and the best parts of an art gallery," says Jarboe.

"When visitors arrive to The Fabric Workshop, they're going to experience 10 rooms that take the form of John's gender journey," says Hellerman.

The exhibition stems from a conversation Jarboe had with her aunt.

"I told her that I use she/her pronouns, and she paused, she waited a second, and then she said, of course, you had a twin in the womb, you ate her. That's why you are the way you are," says Jarboe. "If I had been assigned female at birth, I would have been called Rose."

Visitors choose a teacup that acts as their key to activate the space.

"Put the teacup on the saucer and it makes these installations, these videos sculptures, come alive," she says. "This is from Rose's perspective."

You walk through her life to go on your own gender journey.

"You'll encounter my childhood bedroom, which is recreated," says Jarboe.

She says visitors should interact with her art.

They can open drawers, read and/or write letters, and experience many of the videos by listening through headphones.

"The more you search in the exhibition, the more you're rewarded by that search," she adds.

You'll enter "Mother's Closet," and travel through what she calls, "The Thicket."

Jarboe collaborated with The Fabric Workshop and Museum's lead studio artist, Nami Yamamoto, to create a massive fish.

"There's a lot of symbols throughout the exhibit. It's very surrealist," she says.

Jarboe is an artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

"It's a very multifaceted and multi-tonal, multi-genre gender journey," she says.

The Green Room is a community hangout space to reflect and bloom.

What would you say if you wrote a letter to your gender?

"It is queer people that are making the garden so beautiful," says Jarboe. "I'm so proud and I'm so grateful for the opportunity and the support, and to find a space of queer abundance in so much scarcity feels really, really special."

She says she hopes visitors to the exhibition feel worthy and loved.

John Jarboe: The Rose Garden is on view through September 29 at The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

John Jarboe: The Rose Garden | Get free tickets here
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19107