Hydrofeminism: Feminist artists examine how water shapes human life
The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) presents a small ocean swallowed, on view from July 10, 2026, through February 14, 2027. This group exhibition brings together six intergenerational and international feminist artists—Sholeh Asgary, Patricia Belli, Kiyo Gutierrez, Jessie Homer French, Erin Jane Nelson, and Sunaura Taylor— whose work explores how rivers, oceans, aquifers, swamps, and aqueducts shape human and more-than-human life.
Across performance, sound, sculpture, painting, drawing, and photography, the exhibition considers water as a connective force that links bodies, ecosystems, and histories. The artists engage both the conditions of specific sites and the broader systems water sustains, reframing it not as a passive resource but as an active medium through which life unfolds.
The exhibition is informed by scholar Astrida Neimanis’s concept of hydrofeminism, a theoretical framework for rethinking our relationship to water. It proposes that nothing exists in isolation and that no body—human or otherwise—is ever pure. Every drop is shared, circulating across species, geographies, and histories.
Crucially, hydrofeminism asks us to imagine ourselves as bodies of water. In this view, embodiment is porous and continuously formed through exchanges with other bodies and environments. This shift is not only philosophical but practical, reframing responsibility and care in relation to damaged ecosystems. If we are inseparable from rivers, oceans, and aquifers, their contamination and depletion are conditions we share and are implicated in.
“a small ocean swallowed reflects SJMA’s commitment to exploring urgent environmental questions through contemporary art,” Jeremiah Matthew Davis, SJMA’s Oshman Director and Chief Executive Officer, said. “The exhibition foregrounds water while addressing ecological degradation and recognizing acts of resistance, repair, and collective care.”
The works in a small ocean swallowed take up this call by refiguring the human through forms of representation that render water as a medium of relation, memory, and transformation. In doing so, the exhibition suggests that rethinking the boundaries of the body is essential to imagining how we might repair the waterways that sustain life.
Jessie Homer French, a self-taught painter based in Ojai, California, presents narrative works drawn from direct observation and mediated experience. Her paintings juxtapose natural phenomena such as salmon migrating upstream with human interventions in the landscape, such as offshore oil infrastructure.
Drawings by Berkeley-based artist and scholar Sunaura Taylor give form to aquifers, highlighting underground water systems that remain largely unseen and not fully understood. Her works depict these reservoirs as pressured, anthropomorphized bodies shaped by extraction and contamination. These drawings are in dialogue with her book Disabled Ecologies, which examines environmental disability justice through case studies.
Kiyo Gutierrez, based in Guadalajara, presents performance-based work through video and photography, documenting ritual actions in polluted and rerouted rivers. In boca errante (wandering mouth), Gutierrez uses dyed textiles, gesture, and symbolic knotting to engage rivers as collaborators in processes of mourning and repair. The work references the Pacific Lamprey, imagining acts of return and regeneration.
“Together, these works frame water as a living medium that continuously shapes and reshapes histories, bodies, and environments,” Talia Heiman, SJMA’s associate curator, said. “Drawing on hydrofeminist thought, the exhibition invites us to imagine ourselves as bodies of water and to consider how we might take responsibility for the systems we inhabit and create more just, livable futures.”
a small ocean swallowed is presented in conjunction with the SJMA’s Sowing Sustainability Initiative, a cross-institutional effort grounded in the belief that care for the planet is inseparable from care for audiences, communities, and collections. Through this initiative, SJMA integrates climate-conscious practices across exhibitions, programming, and operations in collaboration with artists, educators, and community partners.
a small ocean swallowed is organized by Talia Heiman, SJMA associate curator.
Coinciding with the opening of a small ocean swallowed, SJMA will expand its open hours to the public. Beginning July 14, the Museum will be open Tuesday–Thursday and Saturday–Sunday from 11am–6pm and on Friday from 11am–9pm.
San Jose Museum of Art
The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to inclusivity, new thinking, and visionary ideas. Founded in 1969 by artists and community leaders, its dynamic exhibitions, collection, and programs resonate with defining characteristics of San José and the Silicon Valley—from its rich diversity to its hallmark innovative ethos. The Museum offers lifelong learning for school children and their educators, multigenerational families, creative adults, university students and faculty, and community groups. SJMA is committed to being a borderless museum, essential to creative life throughout the diverse communities of San José and beyond.
Admission is $20 for adults, $15 for seniors, and free to members, college students, youth and children ages 17 and under, and school teachers (with valid ID).
