{"id":2199722,"date":"2026-10-14T18:02:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2199722"},"modified":"2026-10-14T18:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T15:02:28","slug":"at-frieze-gray-wielebinski-confronts-the-uks-ongoing-bathroom-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2199722","title":{"rendered":"At Frieze, Gray Wielebinski Confronts the UK’s Ongoing Bathroom Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Gray-Wielebinski-Production-2026-Urinal-Cakes-Blue.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n\tAt Frieze London this week, even the bathroom will be a place to see art. Gray Wielebinski\u2019s new site-specific Production<\/em> (2026) will transform the fair\u2019s public toilets into an intimate olfactory environment, where scent, bodily function, privacy, desire, and surveillance will converge.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than disappearing into the functional infrastructure of the bathroom, Production <\/em>announces itself as an artwork: Custom urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks infused with two scents are housed in sculptural cages, with security tags attached. They are strange, brightly colored, and scented. One is almost lipstick-red, while the other is black. Their texture is also different from typical urinal cakes. \u201cThey almost look like cosmetics, or like an art material,\u201d he told ARTnews <\/em>in an interview ahead of the work\u2019s installation at the Regent\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last time Frieze commissioned an artist to make work about its bathrooms was a decade ago, with Julie Verhoeven\u2019s The Toilet Attendant\u2026 Now Wash Your Hands<\/em> (2016), featuring the artist as the attendant in a piece of performance art. Like with Production<\/em>, that work with its commentary on the ethics of labor in the art world, had a political dimension to it.<\/p>\n

\n\tMade in collaboration with perfumier Dean\u2019s Bottom, each of Production<\/em>\u2019s individual parts carries Wielebinski\u2019s name and a security tag, and though they are not for sale, they are, technically, editioned. \u201cIt\u2019s bringing up questions of value too,\u201d he said, connecting it to the work\u2019s overall setting, an art fair.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe objects\u2019 sculptural cages add another layer to the work, connecting them to ideas of protection and exclusion. For Wielebinski, the bathroom is a particularly charged site, where the politics of gendered space have been used to police their use by transgender and gender non-conforming people.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Gray Wielebinski, Production<\/em>, 2026, installation view at Frieze London 2026, presented by Deans Bottom.<\/span>Photo Linda Nylind\/Courtesy Frieze<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAcross the UK, new official guidance that came into force this past August states that single-sex spaces open to the public, including toilets and changing rooms in places like restaurants, gyms, hospital wards, and refuges, should be organized based on biological sex. The guidance, published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), adds that trans people should use either gender-neutral facilities or the ones that match their biological sex. It comes after the UK Supreme Court ruled, in April 2025, that \u201csex\u201d in equality law means \u201cbiological sex\u201d rather than the gender someone identifies as. Trans-rights activists have strongly opposed the code\u2019s implementation, with Trans+ Solidarity Alliance calling the gudiance \u201cunworkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s something that I\u2019m obviously very\u2014I don\u2019t want to say \u2018drawn to\u2019 but it impacts my life on a daily basis,\u201d he said. \u201cThe bathroom holds a very fraught and also sacred and fun and ambivalent place in my world, in my life, in my psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWielebinski first became interested in using scent for his 2023 installation Exhibition<\/em> for the British department store Selfridges. \u201cIt started extremely organically,\u201d Wielebinski said, describing his current olfactory obsession as a means of creating atmosphere and a way of translating between different mediums.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Gray Wielebinski, Production: Toilet Rim Block (Red)<\/em>, 2026.<\/span>Photo Will Edgecombe\/Courtesy the artist and Frieze<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe scent of Production <\/em>is also intentionally familiar, especially for any artists attending Frieze. Wielebinski describes them as \u201ca take on the industrial smelling urinal cake that already exists that we\u2019re used to smelling in the bathroom coinciding with a more conceptual scent based off of the scents of my studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWielebinski said he wasn\u2019t quite sure what emotion Production<\/em> will elicit of those who interact with it, though he expects a \u201cwide range of feelings,\u201d from attraction to disgust, curiosity to ambivalence. His intention isn\u2019t one of provocation but to provide a collective experience to an otherwise private moment, or \u201ca hushed secret thing that then also becomes communal in whatever way that might be,\u201d he said, adding that he hopes it become the topic of conversations, jokes, and even criticism.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhenever you put work out in the world, it\u2019s out of your hands, but I also think that\u2019s, for me, when my work comes alive, when an audience interacts with it,\u201d he said, noting that he wants to \u201cdraw people\u2019s attention to all these things about what a bathroom can mean, and what a body can mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/gray-wielebinski-frieze-london-commission-public-toilets-1234802225\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Gray-Wielebinski-Production-2026-Urinal-Cakes-Blue.jpg?w=1024″] At Frieze London this week, even the bathroom will be a place to see art. Gray Wielebinski\u2019s new site-specific Production (2026) will transform the fair\u2019s public toilets into an intimate olfactory environment, where scent, bodily function, privacy, desire, and surveillance will converge. Rather than disappearing into the functional infrastructure of the bathroom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2199722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2199722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2199722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2199722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2199722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}