Title: Ladies Shower Room
Artist: Steve Halay
Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 24x24in
In Ladies Shower Room, Steve Halay delivers a confrontational and irreverent tableau—two blue-toned, bare-chested figures stare outward, caught mid-conversation or frozen in judgment. Their scribbled features and unrefined breasts mock societal ideas of form, femininity, and perception. The crude cartoon-like expressions evoke both humor and discomfort, a tension Halay leans into unapologetically.
Above them, the scrawled text reads: “Ladies Shower Room” and “He thinks he knows everything.” These lines frame the painting as a commentary on gendered spaces, voyeurism, and the intrusive male gaze. The suggestion of eavesdropping or male entitlement in female-coded environments adds a layer of social critique—halting and absurd all at once.
Halay’s use of childlike marks, graffiti script, and mismatched anatomical proportions destabilizes the viewer’s assumptions about what should be seen and who is allowed to look. It’s a sharp, surreal satire—equal parts bathroom wall graffiti and postmodern protest sign.