If These Stalls Could Talk Launch

Join us for the launch part of If These Stalls Could Talk, an art installation and zine, from 7-9pm at The Music Center's Jerry Moss Plaza.

• The installation in the Lefton Family Restrooms engraves the writing of 6 queer and trans poets on the theme of "comfort" in copper plates on the inside of bathroom stall doors to create private moments of connection in our private public space.
• We will distribute 200 copies of our zine, the third issue of literary magazine The Feminist Toilet, featuring work from 23 writers and artists with a forward by LA Poet Laureate Emeritus Lynne Thompson.
• The event will feature private reading and exploration time, shared discussion, and featured readings.

Hosted by artist Brian Sonia-Wallace and editor Sammy Ginsberg, with publishing assistant Juliana McKenna.

Featured writers on bathroom doors include Stephanie Burt, Cameron Awkward Rich, féi iká shumari, Andrea Gibson, Jennifer Espinoza, and Brian Sonia-Wallace. If These Stalls Could Talk was commissioned by The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. Developed and Delivered by Dyson & Womack. On Display at The Music Center in May 15-June 15 of 2026.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

A restroom is a small room with a lock. A mirror. A moment alone. It’s where some of the best ideas happen. We go here to cry. To breathe. To escape. To put ourselves together again.

But a bathroom is also fundamentally civic infrastructure — a threshold between public and private life. In recent years, restrooms have become symbolic terrain for debates about gender and belonging, and for trans and gender-expansive people this ordinary space can carry extraordinary weight.

If These Stalls Could Talk (the installation) casts restroom stall doors in copper and engraves them with poetry by trans and queer writers. A material historically reserved for permanence, authority, and memorialization is applied at human scale, transforming a politicized site into an archive of lived experience. The theme that unites each poem in the installation is comfort — the verb — the act of creating ease, freedom — even luxury. Please. Finally. You’ll have to go see the exhibit to see those poems. You’ll have to be a little flexible in your identity to see them all. And you know what? In the State of California, no one can challenge your right to do that or demand your ID.

At The Feminist Toilet we believe that gender exists along a spectrum, and is accessible, unique, and mutable for everyone. As protections are stripped from our trans siblings we stand with them in solidarity and demand the access to privacy and dignity that is so encapsulated in the physical space of the restroom.

The poems you will read and hear here are from a large community that supports this mission — we put out a call for art and poetry by anyone who uses the bathroom, and received a powerful stream of responses. These poems range in subject and tone from gas stations to gay sex, nursery rhymes to critical theory, bulimia to a first kiss. Our youngest contributor is four. Our oldest was buddies with Allen Ginsberg. Each poet is united by a shared experience — using the bathroom.

This project was commissioned by The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, developed and delivered by Dyson & Womack as part of the Public Artists in Development (PAID) Program. It was manufactured by GAD Art & Fabrication, Inc.

Event Venue

Jerry Moss Plaza, 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, United States

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