The Union Gallery‘s latest exhibit, A Convergent Evolution of Wet Places, conceptualizes “wet places” as figures of bathrooms, fountains, and public baths to materialize connections between sexuality and space.
Curated by Hong Kong-born and Kingston-based artist GHY Cheung, the exhibition is on display from June 9 to Aug. 29, featuring new media works by artists Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Christopher Lacroix, and Tommy Ting.
“In gathering the bathroom, the fountain and the bath rendered in their works in one space, I was building out the fantasy of a hybrid “wet place.” Presenting works that are not explicitly about queer space under the queer cipher of “wet places” stemmed from an impulse to articulate queer spaces obliquely,” Cheung wrote in a statement to The Journal.
“Wet places” is the exhibit’s queer coded word that signifies communal queer spaces.
“It’s a matter-of-fact, it’s also silly, suggestive. This makes me think it’d be a great addition to a queer lexicon,” Cheung wrote.
GHY Cheung and the Union Gallery received funding through the Ontario Arts Council‘s Curatorial Projects: Indigenous and Culturally Diverse program, which funds the work of Ontario-based Black, Indigenous, people of colour curators who are partnering with an Ontario public art gallery.
When entering the project room, visitors are greeted by moody red lighting and ambient sounds from a fountain, inviting them to explore the convergence of sexuality and space by interacting with new media works that create “wet places.”
The concept of a “wet place” is introduced through a playful video performance of Christopher Lacroix as a human fountain, Sometimes it’s hard to tell where it’s coming from.
This thought-provoking piece is inspired by Bruce Nauman‘s Self Portrait as a Fountain, a photograph influenced by Marcel Duchamp‘s readymade porcelain urinal sculpture, Fountain. Riding the wave of his experimental inspirations, Lacroix’s performance defies conventions by reviving nude fountain statues to explore fountains as sexual figures.
Visitors become players when interacting with a demonstration of Tommy Ting’s video game, Club Baths, a first-person exploration game set in a gay bathhouse. Players cruise through the virtual “wet place” by checking in at the reception, showering, then checking out characters.
Cruising is the act of looking for sex in public spaces to stealthily form connections through knowing looks and unspoken words.
“Cruising is that example everyone cites of using space in ways not intended by its design. One way I’ve imagined “wet places” is as architectural expressions of this layered, resourceful, surprising use of space,” Cheung wrote.
As online cruising currently happens on apps like Grindr, Club Baths explores how games can offer new possibilities for cruising sites.
After exploring Club Baths, visitors walk through curtained stalls to play Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s Make-Believe Bathroom, an online gender-neutral bathroom. The virtual “wet place” is open for all to enter graffitied bathroom stalls that expand the concept of a bathroom beyond its functional purpose. Players can check phones, leave doodles, talk with people in other stalls, then flush the toilet when they are ready to end their experience.
During an artist residency, Cheung developed the exhibition’s concept for hybrid wet places after researching architecture historians and theorists Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, who theorize in their PIN-UP Magazine essay, “Toilet Architecture,” that “the toilet is the most psychosexually charged room in any building.”
“When Morgan approached me about the OAC grant, I wanted to revisit this idea as a curatorial project. The concept for this exhibition started from there,” Cheung stated.
In a similar framework, the exhibit’s “wet places” demonstrate how the communal queer figures of the fountain, bathhouse, and bathroom are more than facilities.
As shown by this exhibit, these wet places are designed for bodies to occupy and to form fleeting connections, proving how space has evolved beyond function.
Tags
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Christopher Lacroix, GHY Cheung, New Media Art, Tommy Ting, Union Gallery
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