“For some reason, in public men's rooms, I often find myself drawn into a power play, where rules are written in the thick air, which often sends my mind spiraling into a dissociative state—unwilling to surrender to the choreography between men, avoiding gazes, hiding my true self in a performance I've already spent decades unlearning. I used to blame myself for going too far, for overthinking again, but these days I'm just too self-conscious of how some structures and spaces try to impose meaning on one's body and gender against consent.

Alongside the bodily needs, the exhibition is about gender, hopes, and dreams that feel more real than the reality around us, set against the sordid discourse of power politics, which seeks to seep deep into the structures of the human psyche and maintain gender control over the individual.”

- Jade Kallio

Public toilets were formally introduced by a sanitary engineer at The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Branded as “monkey closets” or “retiring rooms” they established separate amenities for women and men, the first flush toilet facilities to implement sex-segregation to this basic need. Public toilets have long been a fixture in society; brick and stone benches lined with holes acted as communal latrines in the Indus Valley Civilization and Ancient Rome. Divisions between individuals and groups, female and male were not explicit.

The design of public bathrooms has changed over the years, reflecting society’s shifting priorities concerning sanitation, efficiency, safety, and comfort, while also revealing the spatial arrangement of social relations. Public bathrooms are structured by social norms around gender, sexuality, and embodiment. They are not practical, neutral spaces but deeply normative ones that regulate bodies and enforce a specific social order. The disorientation felt by queer individuals in these spaces reinforces how the built environment shapes and limits experiences of identity and belonging.

Through film, installation, and performance, Kallio merges fictional and non-fictional narratives where masculinity ‑ in its most performative sense ‑ seems to amplify, blending tension and hyper-awareness. A yearning for comfort manifests through dialogue with Duchamp’s female alter-ego Rrose Sélavy, and through Kolya’s tender connection with Lana Del Rey’s world of lyrics in Ocean Blvd; finding shelter in feminine gestures from art history and pop culture.

Juggling humour and melancholy, Power Play displays the complex reality of being oneself while executing the most mundane gesture, in what should be the most banal setting.

Jade Kallio is a Helsinki-based filmmaker and artist. They work in experimental film, performance and visual arts. Kallio is interested in the meanings attached to gender and the body and the spaces that produce them.

The exhibition is curated by Lucie Gottlieb and Lauren Johnson.