An exhibition at the University of Sydney Tin Shed Gallery explores how women, girls and the LGBTIQ+ communities experience public space.
Presented through data, research and narratives, the exhibition highlights the spatial inequity and injustice experienced by women and marginalized communities with a particular focus on public safety and sexual harassment.
The exhibition is created by the XYX Lab at Monash University, which was established in 2017 to research the intersection between gender and the built environment. The work was originally planned to be presented as part of the Space-Time-Existence exhibition at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Hypersext City exhibition at Tin Shed Gallery.
Accompanying the exhibition is an online repository of documents, data, research and lived experiences. These include the fact that in Canada, “one in three women and one in eight men feel uncomfortable or unsafe in public because of another’s behaviour;” and that in the United State, “around 50 percent of harassed women and men [had] experienced street harassment by age 17.”
In a video work created for the exhibition, XYX Lab director Nichole Kalms says, “So many women and so many girls tell of not wanting to be out at night who will not return to a space or a place where something wasn’t quite right.”
The exhibition also invites visitors to contribute their ideas and suggestions for mitigating spatial inequity in urban settings.
The exhibition program also includes a series of workshops which will use the data and stories collected for the exhibition to prompt consideration for public spaces could be made safer for women, girls and LGBTQI+ communities.
The exhibition is on at Tin Shed Gallery until 9 April.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
