Out of Order is an exhibition that explores the tension that exists between private and public realms, particularly looking at sites such as bathrooms (in this category we include bathhouses, changing rooms, bathing rooms, comfort stations, swimming pools, locker rooms, and metropolitan plumbing networks). In several of Chicago’s public parks, the spatial logic of bathrooms collaborates with the architecture and the landscape to encode and bifurcate whole systems of territory: washrooms for women/washrooms for men, locker rooms for women/locker rooms for men, gymnasium for women/gymnasium for men, outdoor area for women/outdoor exercise area for men, and playgrounds for children (regardless of gender) conceived as an extension of women’s space. The way these structures were designed in the early 20th century do not necessarily reflect how we think today. In sites like bathrooms, we think about the broad questions: what is public and what is private?

Exhibition / 2018 Fall