A toilet you don’t expect in a restaurant on the ancient bastions of Alghero. There are colorful paintings and strange sculptures, even a portrait of Trump that stands out on the wall, right above the toilet. On the white toilet seat the writing “the death of Duchamp”.
Because the author of the “Toilet Museum”, Fabio Saiu, a 54-year-old artist from Alghero, started from Marcel Duchamp’s urinal to restore dignity to the toilets. “ In 1917 the French artist had brought the toilet into the gallery, and from that moment conceptual art was born,” Saiu says. “Well, I wanted to do the opposite.”
Saiu drags art into the bathroom, with tributes to very famous sculptures, such as Michelangelo's David, which appears in the anteroom with its head stuffed with Sardinian gnocchetti. Then the paintings, one with the sunset on Capo Caccia, others less romantic, in the style of Fabio Saiu, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari and with a passion for catering. Here and there are ginquetas, the stones that characterize the paving of the historic center.
Customers appreciate it. "A German tourist tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that it was the most beautiful bathroom she had ever seen in her life," says the artist who began his career in 1992 with a solo exhibition curated by Pinuccio Sciola.
The aim is to get people talking, to fuel a fruitful and healthy debate, arousing curiosity in the many unaware tourists/spectators who enter the bathroom and then question the owner, starting a conversation about art.
