The acid-green walls are covered with stickers, scraps of paper, graffiti, and projections. You look at them with the same curiosity reserved for the messages left by strangers in public restrooms: seemingly random notes that, this time, all carry meaning. Even inside the toilet bowl, two asparagus spears spin in a stop-motion animation, visible only until someone sits down. Welcome to Asparagus, Lark Chang-Yeh’s exhibition, on view through August 30, 2026, at Water Closet Gallery in San Francisco—an art gallery housed inside a fully functioning public restroom.

When curator Kate Ortega decided to open a gallery inside a fully functioning bathroom, Chang-Yeh immediately thought of Asparagus by Suzan Pitt, the 1978 experimental animated film in which the protagonist poops out a large, phallic asparagus that lands in the toilet.

“This particular moment is absurd, hilarious, and also surreal,” says the artist. “It is a moment that has stuck with me, and I wanted to recreate an immersive experience.”

Lark Chang-Yeh

From that reference, the asparagus becomes the symbol around which the entire exhibition revolves: a figure Chang-Yeh uses to represent the transmasculine body and, more specifically, the so-called T-dick, referring to clitoral growth associated with taking testosterone. Phallic yet vegetal, capable of growing and transforming, it allows the artist to portray the trans body as mutable and to frame change not as a deviation from the norm, but as a possibility for self-determination—all without sacrificing a touch of irony.

The specificity of the space adds another layer of meaning to the project. “Bathrooms are often thought of as dirty, filthy, and intimately private spaces—spaces that contradict what we think of as ‘art’, which is high-brow and tasteful,” Chang-Yeh explains. But bathrooms also have a long queer history, shaped by cruising and, still today, caught at the center of political attempts to police trans bodies, including recent battles over trans people’s access to restrooms. “I was excited by the challenge to create work that exists entirely in the context of a fully functioning bathroom, especially from the perspective of a queer and trans person.”

Lark Chang-Yeh

Asparagus attempts to shift the focus beyond the so-called bathroom wars, bringing attention to what is often left out of the public debate: the informal networks through which trans people exchange knowledge, experiences, and resources. From advice about the body and pleasure to packers and STPs—prosthetics that allow people to urinate standing up—the exhibition brings to the surface forms of knowledge built and shared outside official channels, within online communities and collective spaces.

Chang-Yeh chose to embrace the graffiti and writing as part of the bathroom’s culture. “I see it as a way for visitors to communicate with one another,” they explain, “especially because the installation can only be enjoyed one person at a time.”

While online this knowledge circulates mainly among those who seek it out, here it becomes impossible to ignore. You can choose not to enter certain spaces, or not to engage with certain issues. But sooner or later, we all end up in the toilet.