This blog exists because I drew a big lesbian toilet cubicle and then accidentally made myself emotional about it. The artwork itself is a first person view, you are standing inside a cubicle, trousers hypothetically around your ankles, facing a door that has seen things, all the walls are layered with graffiti, names, dates, hearts, scribbles, declarations, small jokes that only make sense to the people who wrote them. It is intimate in the way only a public toilet can be, which is a sentence I never expected to write, but lesbian art has a habit of dragging you into odd corners of yourself and asking you to look properly.
I asked people online if they were in a WLW couple and if they would give me their names so I could write them on the walls, real names of real women who love women, and I expected a handful of replies, maybe some jokey pseudonyms, possibly someone calling themselves Gay McGayface. What I got instead was a flood of stories, quiet messages, public comments, private DMs sent at 2am, all of them trusting me with something small and enormous at the same time. Names look small when you write them down, but they carry whole lives behind them, whole histories of bravery, denial, joy and fear.
This is lesbian art in its truest sense, not a manifesto, not a declaration carved in marble, but a record of who was here, who loved who and who wanted to be remembered.
The cubicle as a time capsule
I wanted to make something that felt like a snippet in time, a moment frozen in that specific way graffiti always is, you never know who wrote it, when exactly they were there, or what happened immediately afterwards. Did they leave together, did they wash their hands, did they never see each other again, did they go home and adopt a dog with anxiety issues. All of that is unknowable, and that is part of the point.
In a hundred years someone might look at this artwork and be baffled, not by the drawing itself but by the context around it, they might ask why being gay was still illegal in some countries, why it was still debated as if it were a hobby you picked up in your twenties and grew out of, why some women had to whisper their names to me privately because they were not out to family or friends yet. Or they might be baffled in the opposite direction, shocked by how open we were in some places, how pride parades filled city centres, how lesbian art and LGBTQ art hung openly in galleries and shops and living rooms, how you could buy a print covered in boobs and sapphic joy without having to pretend it was ironic.
Real names of real women
Some of the names belong to brand new couples, still fizzing with that early electricity, still pretending they are very chill about everything. Some belong to couples who have been together for decades, who have outlasted bars, fashions, governments, and at least one disastrous haircut phase. There are cis women, trans women, women who are still figuring out what words feel right, women who are very clear about who they are.
There are also names that mark endings, relationships that have finished but mattered enough to be memorialised, because not all love stories need a happy ending to be worth recording. One of the most unexpectedly tender parts of this project was hearing from women who wanted to mark something that had ended, not bitterly, not dramatically, just honestly, as if saying this happened and it changed changed me.
And then there were the private messages that made my chest do that tight thing, women asking to be included because they wanted to be part of it, but they could not be public yet. They were not out, not to family, not to friends, sometimes not even fully to themselves, and the idea that their name could exist quietly on a wall, even a drawn one, felt important to them. That is lesbian art doing what it does best, creating space where there was none, offering recognition without demanding performance.
Why a toilet, though
If you are a little older like me, you will remember the dingy bars, the ones tucked into basements, down stairs that always felt slightly damp, places that required commitment to attend, because you had to really want it to descend into those rooms. A lot of gay bars were underground, literally and socially, hidden, semi secret, safe and unsafe at the same time.
The toilets in those places were their own world, you could sometimes smell them before you saw them, a faint odour of piss, subtleties of bleach, a struggling vanilla air freshener valiantly fighting a losing battle. The walls were covered in layers of history, phone numbers, insults, flirtations, declarations of love, political statements, someone always writing something earnest next to something deeply stupid. Toilets were where you could be alone without being alone, where you could cry, kiss, breathe and check your face.
So yes, the cubicle is intentional, it is not just a gimmick, it is a nod to those spaces where a lot of queer life happened quietly, away from the main room, away from the dance floor. It is a place that feels mundane and sacred at the same time, which is my favourite combination.
Lesbian art as evidence
I think about this artwork as evidence, as proof that we were here, that we loved each other, that our lives were real. Lesbian art often gets treated as niche, decorative, something you put in a spare room or a hallway if you are feeling brave, but it is also historical record, a way of documenting lives that were not always considered worth documenting.
When I talk about being a lesbian artist, what I really mean is that my work is shaped by the way I move through the world, by the things I notice, by the jokes I make to cope with discomfor. LGBTQ art and queer art are often expected to educate, to explain, to justify their existence, whereas I am much more interested in making work that simply exists, that assumes you are already in on it, or at least curious enough to lean closer.
This piece does that by refusing to explain itself fully, it lets the names do the talking, it lets the viewer fill in the gaps, it trusts that lesbian art does not need a footnote every time.
Humour, because obviously
There is humour in this work because there has to be, because queer communities have always used humour as survival, as glue, as a way of signalling to each other without shouting. Some of the graffiti is funny, some of it is awkward, some of it is deeply sincere in a way that makes you wince a bit, which is honestly my favourite genre of sincerity.
The idea that in a hundred years someone might be standing in front of this artwork, seriously analysing it, writing a paper about it, while it quietly smells like imaginary piss and vanilla, makes me laugh. The contrast between the seriousness with which queer lives are often debated and the absolute ordinariness of where those lives actually happen is the joke, and also the point.
A snippet, not the whole story
I keep coming back to that phrase, a snippet in time, because that is all any artwork ever really is, no matter how grand it pretends to be. This cubicle does not tell you everything; it does not try to. It gives you fragments, names without faces, love without exposition, and trusts you to understand that a full life exists beyond the frame.
As a queer artist, I am less interested in creating definitive statements and more interested in creating spaces people can step into, even briefly, and feel something familiar. This piece is not about toilets, not really, it is about visibility, about the small ways we mark ourselves into the world, even when the world is not always welcoming.
Where this sits in my wider work
If you know my work already, this will not feel like a sharp left turn, there are boobs, obviously, and there is symbolism.
This piece sits alongside my other lesbian art prints, it is part of an ongoing conversation I am having with myself and with anyone who wants to look, visibility, and the everyday reality of queer life.
If you want to see how this work connects to the rest of my practice, you can explore my lesbian art collection at https://www.caffersart.co.uk/collections/lesbian-art, or wander through my wider LGBTQ art prints at https://www.caffersart.co.uk/collections/lgbtq-art, both of which are basically extensions of this same impulse to record what it feels like to exist as a woman who loves women.
Being searchable and being seen
There is something quietly funny about thinking of someone typing “lesbian art” into a search bar and ending up here, reading about a toilet cubicle. But that is the reality of making work now, you are always speaking to multiple audiences, the person standing in front of the artwork, the person scrolling past it on their phone, the algorithm trying to decide what box to put it in.
So yes, this is lesbian art, made by a lesbian artist, a lesbian visual artist who is also an LGBTQ artist, a queer artist, a sapphic artist if we are collecting labels like stickers. But more than that, it is an attempt to leave something behind that feels honest, that feels like it came from a real place, not a marketing meeting.
Why this matters now
We are in a moment where visibility feels both easier and more fragile than ever, where lesbian art can be celebrated one minute and dismissed the next, where progress is not a straight line and certainly not guaranteed. Making work like this feels like planting a small flag, saying we are here, we were here, we will probably always be here in some form.
Queer art has always done this work, often without resources and permission. This cubicle is part of that lineage, a small, slightly grubby monument to everyday queer existence.
If you are wondering where to put it
One of the most common reactions I get to my work is laughter followed by uncertainty, people love it but are not sure where it goes in their home. This piece is no different, it asks a bit of you as a viewer, it asks you to be comfortable with intimacy, with humour, with the fact that lesbian art does not need to be tucked away.
It can live in a hallway, a living room, a bedroom, anywhere you want a reminder that real lives, real love stories, and real history are often written in the most unglamorous places.
A final thought, before we wash our hands
This artwork started as a simple idea and became something much bigger because people trusted me with their names and their stories. That trust is not something I take lightly, and it is what makes this artwork feel alive to me.
This is a snippet in time, but it is also a reminder that snippets add up, that names on a wall become history if you let them, and that sometimes the most honest record of who we were is written in a toilet cubicle, in marker pen, while the air freshener tries its best.
If this resonates, if you recognise yourself in the names, the jokes, the quiet tenderness of it all, you can find this piece alongside my other lesbian art prints and LGBTQ art in my shop. Everything I make comes from the same place, humour, memory, bodies, and the everyday reality of loving women. You’re very welcome to have a look, even if you’re still deciding where on earth you’d hang it.