Final Project Proposal
For my final project, I will be creating an installation in the bathrooms of the MoMA PS1. The installation is meant to break the seriousness of the museum as well as the awkwardness of bathrooms. It would be presented as images on different areas of the bathroom, including but not limited to, bathroom stalls, walls and surrounding hand dryers. The images would be photographed portraits by me, inspired by renaissance portraiture and wardrobe, juxtaposed with a variety of facial expressions in which the models will seem to be interacting with the viewer.
The images are meant to seem mocking of the viewer as they use the restroom and are intended to break the unspoken “rules” of the bathroom. As studies have shown, people in bathrooms tend to act very unusual, as everyone becomes impersonal. Men especially, have shown “nonperson treatment”[1] even when running into friends in bathrooms as any form of socializing is unreasonably “inappropriate”. Bathrooms can have a complete change of atmosphere with art that can be appreciated and even laughed at as “they provide a measure of quiet and isolation from crowded galleries and museums” for people to have their own reaction without the audience of people around.[2]
Aside from social interactions, bathroom art or “latrinalia”[3] in general has been a form of art that has been largely overlooked in its place in society. Bathroom graffiti has been a type of graffiti that has allowed virtually anyone with the need to express a thought to jot it down for strangers to experience later. In this way, public bathrooms were essentially the first public forums. It presents a less daunting form of vandalizing as it is nearly impossible to get caught doing and relatively easy to do. “Intimate, anonymous, accepting, it’s a necessary space, a place to say anything, to say what can’t be said anywhere else”[4], Lightsey Darst explains. She continues to describe how in a society like ours, bathroom art and graffiti have become an outlet for those who feel excluded, artists who want raise questions or even existential questions.
I had never thought about a bathroom being a stage where people’s opinions and thoughts can freely live, yet it is completely true; until they are wiped away that is. Julie Beck also brings up the subject in the matter of how the fact that it is a public bathroom “may skew how people present themselves when they uncap that Sharpie”[5]. Whether it be the want to pick at people’s emotions, hope for someone to get your joke, or simply mark your territory, people have used bathrooms to expose their thoughts.
With this research in mind, I want to create images that closely reflect the randomness of bathroom graffiti. Also tying in the theme of being in a museum, I plan on maintaining a seemingly “refined” portrait counterbalanced with comical and witty commentary on society.
[1] Rainey, Clint. “Everything We Know About Human Bathroom Behavior.” The Cut. May 04, 2015. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://www.thecut.com/2015/05/science-of-us-guide-to-bathroom-behavior.html.
[2] “Bathroom as Site: A Brief, Incomplete History of Lavatorial Exhibitions.” ARTnews. September 21, 2017. Accessed March 14, 2018. http://www.artnews.com/2017/09/20/bathroom-as-site-a-brief-incomplete-history-of-lavatorial-exhibitions/.
[3] Vaughanbell, Author. “The bathroom of the mind.” Mind Hacks. August 19, 2012. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://mindhacks.com/2012/06/01/the-bathroom-of-the-mind/.
[4] The Writing on the Wall: Bathroom Graffiti as a Public Art Form – Mn Artists. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://www.mnartists.org/article/writing-wall-bathroom-graffiti-public-art-form.
[5] Beck, Julie. “Behind the Writing on the Stalls.” The Atlantic. November 21, 2014. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/behind-the-writing-on-the-stalls/383016/.
MANIFESTO
Those who view my art, will only experience it at their most vulnerable: in the restroom. Confronting the world in an androgynous body, the bathroom has always been a weird place. With the ambition to break gender boundaries and also bring humor to a place in which it is absent; I want to be able to deconstruct the demeaning monotony and conformity that exists within the walls of every public restroom.
