I was very glad to see how many people interacted with Ladies Room while it was exhibited at Queer Art(ists) Now, creating a great pile of discarded toilet tissue on the floor below the dispenser. Seeing the pile of tissues grow on the floor, being trodden on, dripped on, completely discarded really emphasised the throwaway nature of the comments people make to queer people in gendered spaces. When someone in the ladies room asks me 'are you a woman?' it's a fleeting moment for them, they don't think about what they're saying, they just throw their words at me... but for me it sticks, it piles up, I can't just throw it away.
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.
Various experiments involving tile effect wall paper as a background to transform the gallery space into a bathroom space. I experimented with dirtying the lid to create a more realistic experience of using a public bathroom, but decided that this would put people off interacting with the work. I also consider creating a finger print on the lid to encourage people to touch it, but felt that this was unnecessary and could also put people off interacting with the work.
An experiment to see how the artwork would look placed atop a real toilet - perhaps in future I could create these portraits with slogans as stickers to be stuck under the lids of public toilets as a form of activism.
Interrogation (detail), Chaz Howkins, 2017, acrylic on scratched toilet seat and lid
Interrogation (detail), Chaz Howkins, 2017, acrylic on scratched toilet seat and lid
Close up shots of Interrogation showing the detail of the text scratched into the toilet lid. The text is quotes from experiences of gender non-conforming people in public bathrooms.
Interrogation, Chaz Howkins, 2017, acrylic on scratched toilet seat and lid
A self portrait painted on the underside of a toilet seat lid. The artwork should be positioned closed on top of a plinth so that the audience has to interact with it to reveal the painting. Once the lid is opened the audience should then notice the text scratched into the lid around the portrait which can only be seen up close. The text is a series of phrases which have been said to myself or other gender non conforming people while using the women's bathroom.
Transphobia Poster, Chaz Howkins, 2017, digitally created poster
After adapting the sanitary bags to read "please dispose of transphobia in the bin provided" I felt this would be an appropriate slogan for a poster so created posters which I placed on the walls of public bathrooms.
This interactive artwork 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 either my own experiences of presenting androgynously or the experiences of those who present themselves similarly to myself.
Are You A Boy Or A Girl? (clip), Chaz Howkins, 2017, film
3 minute clip of a 30 minute film intended to be played on a loop.
Too often strangers feel that the way I look gives them the right to ask me “are you a boy or a girl?”. I created a durational performance film of myself repeating this phrase because when people ask me this, it’s a one off experience for them, but it’s something that stays with me and continues to happen, so the idea is that the film plays continuously and the audience will dip in and out of this interrogative experience.
Define Your Own Femininity, Chaz Howkins, 2017, photograph
Femininity is Subjective, Chaz Howkins, 2017, photograph
I waxed one strip of my leg hair so I could write messages in the patch of bare skin surrounded by hair - however I think my leg hair is too light for this effect to be noticeable, so this photo shoot was not as successful as I'd hoped.
Gendered Space #5 (Self), Chaz Howkins, 2017, photograph
Gendered spaces such as bathrooms are a place of anxiety for androgynous presenting people as we are often subjected to interrogation or harassment. I posed an androgynous model in this unsafe space with the words ‘are you a boy or a girl’ written on their face to replicate this common experience.
