Dylan Cullen’s ‘Girls Trip’

This is emerging artist Dylan Cullen’s ‘Girl’s Trip,’ a temporary site-specific immersive installation created in a studio space in Alexander Hall for an exhibition at the University of Guelph in 2025.

For this piece, I focused my research on women ‘in the wild’ defining the female experience as an existence within the hidden community of female lives. Beyond the social world of women in competition with one another, relating their existence merely in relation to male validation… a secret world of womanhood hides in the shadows – Dylan Cullen

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The paintings in this installation were created by combining and overlaying images of friends to create a comprehensive scene that shows the range of activity that really occurs in a girls’ washroom, answering the long-asked question of “what do we really do in there?” Cullen says.

“Placing these images on the wall with a sink and a mirror in the middle, I wanted the viewer to have an opportunity to be a part of the scene, an experience that some viewers may have never had before if they have never been in a women’s washroom at a club,” Cullen notes.

“In addition to all of this, the graffiti on the wall continues the idea of a ‘secret community’. For this, I created reproductions of real graffiti found in bars around Guelph (primarily Trappers Alley), bringing new life to these anonymous messages.”

Dylan Cullen is a multi-disciplinary, mixed-media artist working primarily in painting and photography to explore themes that explore social contemplation and personal reflection. As a recent graduate from the University of Guelph with a double major in psychology and studio art, Dylan integrates these two areas of study throughout her artistic process.

Dylan’s work has recently been exhibited in Zavitz Gallery, the 57th Juried Art Show (JAS) (Zavitz Hall, Guelph, ON.), and in this year’s Open Studio night at the University of Guelph.

See Girls Trip and more on Dylan Cullen’s Instagram, here.