If These Walls Could Talk: Activating Bathrooms as Art Spaces
with Mayuko Fujino and Bryan Zimmerman

Register Here!

How can public art begin to normalize conversations around basic human emotions such as anxiety, anger, loneliness, and insecurity? How can art provide a safe space for others in your community to think and learn about mental health issues? In this week-long workshop, students will create a collaborative, site-specific artwork in the Art Omi: Education Pavilions bathrooms that incorporates stencil techniques and other methods of producing large-scale public art. The workshop engages in notions of health equity, predatory marketing to youth, addiction, mental health, science, anatomy, youth advocacy, and other related topics. This workshop is created in partnership with Tobacco Free Action of Columbia and Greene Counties.

About Mayuko Fujino

Mayuko Fujino is a self-taught papercut and stencil artist based in the Hudson Valley, NY. Inspired by Japanese traditional stencil textile designs, she has been practicing her art since 1999. Her site-specific art installation titled The Inner Garden explored the public bathroom as a democratized alternative art space, and how to create an opportunity for yourself outside the already existing structure of the art world. She has worked on public art projects commissioned by the NYC Department of Transportation, NYC Parks, WGXC Radio, and taught in art programs at public schools as a member of RPGA Studio, a NYC/Dutchess County based community art non-profit organization.

About Bryan Zimmerman

Bryan Zimmerman is a transdisciplinary artist, photographer, and health educator whose practice explores our relationship with nature, natural resources, nutrition, predatory marketing forces, and environmental justice. From 2001-2017 Zimmerman served as an adjunct photography professor, full-time photography technician, and Outreach Pre-College instructor at The Cooper Union in New York City. Since 2021, he has served as the Youth Engagement Coordinator at Tobacco-Free Action of Columbia and Greene Counties, a program within the Columbia County Community Healthcare Consortium.

About Tobacco-Free Action of Columbia and Greene Counties

Tobacco-Free Action advocates for policy change that reduces exposure to secondhand smoke, makes tobacco products less visible and accessible, and makes tobacco use more expensive, less convenient, and less socially acceptable.