Please wash your hands after the exhibition: art comes to Sydney toilets
In what could well be the final frontier for art, works by photographer Evelina Fietisova are about to go on show in train station toilets all over Sydney.
Two hundred so-called Smartboxes will today be switched on in station bathrooms from Blacktown to Bondi, giving a new twist to the concept of a captive audience.
Fietisova said her exhibition, Reframed, features male, female and transgender models shot in a Vogue magazine style but without their gender being immediately apparent.
The Ukraine-born artist said she was trying to challenge common perceptions of beauty and loved the idea of showing her work in a toilet cubicle.
"People will be having their alone time, washing their hands, thinking about themselves and do I look nice in the mirror," she said. "They're not expecting to be challenged, and during that intimate time when you are already thinking about what is beautiful, it will push out this message.
"When people look at it, many people might judge and not understand the idea. I hope that if there is a small amount of people that do understand, and learn to accept there are many ways someone can be beautiful and not just your typical girl on Instagram."
There are plans to install Smartboxes in every cubicle on the Sydney trains map by August.
And while the screens are mostly intended to show advertising, Smartbox director Navdeep Tuteja said the company planned to bring in a new artist each year for a two-week exhibition.
"We really wanted to show that we are reframing the idea of advertising and are saying that we are a different media company from the old fashioned rules," he said.
"We want to show our retail capabilities, and hopefully this will gain people's attention and make them think a bit differently," he said.
"We also wanted to use the screens before going to market to communicate an important message through art."