CHAZ HOWKINS
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Don't Linger

Don’t Linger is an interactive installation of 27 toilet seats mounted to a wall; the viewer can lift up the lids of the toilet seats to reveal portrait drawings and text.  The portraits are realistic pencil drawings of androgynous or gender non-conforming people and the text comes from their individual stories of anxiety or harassment they’ve experienced in public gendered spaces.
​Don’t Linger questions the difference between gender identity and gender expression as well as the difference between gender and sex while critiquing the rigid segregation of gender in public spaces.  The intention is to showcase the experiences of queer people navigating gendered spaces, particularly public bathrooms, in the hope of making a predominantly non-queer audience reconsider how they interact with members of the queer community within these spaces.
Picture
Don't Linger, 2018, installation (toilet seats, pen, pencil on paper)

Debate

​Debate examines the gendered segregation of public space and the impact this can have on those who identify outside of the gender binary.  Using public bathrooms usually presents two opposing choices, a simple decision for most, but for some, either option results in anxiety and fear of being verbally or physically harassed.
Match box edges affixed together hang by a motorised chain over one of the toilet bowls, spinning precariously close to the unlit matches as if it could go up in flames at any moment.

Ladies Room

Ladies Room ​is an interactive artwork which encourages the audience to take a tissue from the toilet tissue dispenser and then either keep it or add it to the pile on the floor.  Each tissue has written on it a quote from real life experiences in a gendered space - the women's bathroom.  The quotes come from the artist's own experiences of presenting androgynously and the experiences of other androgynous or queer presenting people.
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  • The Art
  • The Artist
    • About
    • Contact
    • Exhibitions