Bernadette Woodruff’s Strange Looking Creature art exhibition is raw and vulnerable, speaking on her experiences living as a trans-woman. This new exhibition can be seen in Jack Arends Hall.

Woodruff began crafting the photos in the exhibition three years ago when she entered the NIU M.F.A program. Most of pieces were created between 2022 – when she received her bachelors at NIU – and 2025.

Bernadette Woodruff, a third year M.F.A. candidate, spoke about the meaning of her exhibit and what to expect.

“It’s mostly self-portraiture and dealing with my experience of life,” Woodruff said. “It’s a self-portraiture in my life as a non-passing trans woman, it’s generating experience. And the idea of self-portraiture, not being an exercise in vanity, but being a way of confronting the feeling, knowing that other people are seeing it and trying to recontextualize that in a way that makes sense. In that, I see photographs as this excessive portal to maybe some kind of parallel dimension where we also exist.” 

The Strange Looking Creatures exhibition is also part of Woodruff’s thesis project and is her first official solo exhibition.

Some of the pieces in the exhibit that Woodruff thinks students should pay attention to the most are “Scenes From The Life in Red” and “Anatomy 001.”

Most of the pieces from the exhibition are self-portraits with many of them serving as forms of artistic expression. 

The exhibition is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day with Woodruff holding a reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday for her exhibition.