Male and Female Genital Wallpaper
- Artist: Robert Gober
- Date: 1989
- Medium: Screenprint on paper
- Dimensions: Overall display dimensions variable
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Male and Female Genital Wallpaper” by Robert Gober. In 1989 he turned a plain room into a literal conversation about bodies by covering all four walls with hand‑screenprinted paper. The sheets show simple white drawings on black that look like chalk marks on a board—penises, buttocks, a female pubic area—repeating in a grid. It’s not a pornographic tableau, but it’s undeniably graphic, and when it first appeared at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York critics debated whether nudity in art should be allowed.
The wallpaper is one element of Gober’s larger room‑size installation called “Untitled.” The room also contains eight cast pewter drains set into the wall and a paper bag with resin‑injected donuts sitting on a plinth. Together, the wallpaper, drains, and donuts create a staged domestic space that feels both mundane and unsettling, pushing viewers to question how we see and interpret the human body in everyday contexts.
See it in person
Male and Female Genital Wallpaper is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
