House-Tree-Person (2026) ︎︎︎
Presented at D.D.D.D. in New York City, April 3 - May 9, 2026.
hut (1)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 15 x 18 inches. May 2025.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 16.25 x 17.5 inches. August 2025.
hut (3)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 16.25 x 17.5 inches. August 2025.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 15 x 16 inches. October 2025.
hut (interference)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 13 x 15.5 inches. October 2025.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 13 x 14 inches. April 2026.
hut (for the midwest)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium and netting on canvas. 21 x 25 inches. December 2025.
hut (for Thomas Nozkowski)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, beeswax, and netting on canvas. 25 x 27 inches. March 2026.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s fram. 11 x 17 inches. November 2025.
dam (2)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 11 x 17 inches. November 2025.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 17 x 21 inches November 2025.
dam (4)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 15 x 15 inches. November 2025.
dam (homage to the square)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 15 x 15 inches. November 2025.
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 13 x 19 inches. November 2025.
dam (5)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 13 x 19 inches. November 2025.
dam (for Morandi)
Oil, acrylic, cold wax medium, and Dragon Skin Silicone on panel with artist’s frame. 17 x 21 inches. November 2025.
Dragon Skin silicone, pigment, artificial wig, clothing, embroidery thread, beeswax, latex, acrylic paint, elastic thread, map pins, vintage crock pot.
16.5 x 11 x 12 inches. July 2025
hut (for Strega Nona)
27 cast beeswax slabs; dried herbs and essential oils of rosemary, thyme, basil, sage, and oregano; cast urethane rubber witch fingers; bolts. Dimensions variable. 11 x 14 inches each. March 2026.
hut (for the barefoot contessa)
Single channel video installation, sound. 23:41. March 2026. Watch here.
writing:
Domesticity is a quality rarely afforded to transsexual women. In the culture, we are often sexual objects, exotic aberrations, and clowns – rarely, are we homemakers. In the grand tradition of transsexual image building, Catherine Birk uses wax and silicone as materials to build a new self and carve a place in the collective imagination for the sapphic housewifey transsexual.
In House-Tree-Person, Birk conjures a new mythology of transsexual lesbian domesticity, calling upon her pantheon of domestic goddesses. Birk evokes culinary powerhouses with distinctly witchy and feminine charge to slowly transform herself into Strega Nona using a magical crockpot of beeswax. Beeswax materially and narratively connects each work, weaving together feminine archetypes of witchcraft and homemaking and imbuing them with potent sensuality and the fluidity inherent to the process of transitioning.
Building off of her previous net paintings, Birk continues her subversion of rigid structures through her manipulation of nets, skewing and queering the grid with careful manipulation and tension. Her version of domesticity does not shy away from sexuality, from beavers, from humor, from imagining new kinds of motherhood and wifery. House-Tree-Person envisions transition as a magical, funny, and beneficious process. Here, transition is a continuous iteration, an exploration, an experiment that repurposes a retrograde cultural memory of femininity to imagine an exciting world anew, and I, for one, am eager to taste from its magical lesbian crockpot.
– Vera Blossom
Author of How to Fuck Like a Girl
artist talk:
In Conversation: Catherine Birk and Kate Sherman, House-Tree-Person.
Presented by D.D.D.D., link to watch here.
installation images:
Documentation courtesy of D.D.D.D., New York, NY.
