Julie Verhoeven's Toilet Installation Disrupts Frieze London

At the 14th edition of Frieze London, artist Julie Verhoeven presented an eccentric installation titled 'The Toilet Attendant… Now wash your hands' inside the fair's pavilion. The work transformed a unisex restroom into a provocative art piece, confusing gallerists and collectors with its gendered decor—a blue mat for women and a pink one for men—while the artist herself, dressed as a toilet attendant with painted face, offered toilet paper, perfumes, tampons, condoms, and lollipops. The installation featured coffee beans painted on the toilet lid alluding to femininity, and urinals decorated with targets. A scale at the entrance added to the experience. The article contextualizes Verhoeven's work within art history, referencing Marcel Duchamp's 1917 'Fountain', Piero Manzoni's 'Merde d'artiste', Fernando Botero's bathroom paintings, Lisa Levy's performance 'The artist is humbly present', and Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet at the Guggenheim. Critic Federica Beretta uses the installation as a metaphor for the contemporary art market, describing it as an entropic, artificial ecosystem that favors provocation over quality and is highly sexist, racist, and classist. The toilet attendant's call to 'wash your hands' serves as a reminder of authenticity and universal human needs amidst the fair's commercialism.