Aqueous Renaissance

ART LABOR Gallery is honored to present Aqueous Renaissance, a retrospective of internationally acclaimed artist Christy Lee Rogers. For more than twenty years, Rogers has pursued a singular vision underwater, crafting images that critics have likened to the grandeur of Renaissance and Baroque painting. Suspended bodies, drenched in light and movement, appear as if drawn from another era, yet speak urgently to the world we live in today.

Born in Hawaiʻi, Rogers discovered water as both her stage and her muse. Through carefully choreographed scenes photographed at night in swimming pools, she creates vast, luminous dramas that recall the intensity of Caravaggio and the sweeping motion of Rubens. Yet her art belongs firmly to the present—cinematic in scale, deeply human in its vulnerability, and shaped by influences that range from mythology to the dreamlike visions of filmmakers Federico Fellini, Baz Luhrmann, and James Cameron.

The exhibition title, Aqueous Renaissance, reflects Rogers’ creation of a new kind of rebirth—one made of water, light, and flesh. At a time when the world feels fractured and uncertain, her work reminds us of the enduring need for beauty, for narrative, and for images that confront chaos with clarity and grace. Her underwater visions are not escapist fantasies but mirrors of our collective condition—fragile, fluid, and searching for meaning.

“For me, water has always been both chaos and freedom,” Rogers says. “It strips away control and asks us to see ourselves in a different light. That’s where my stories begin.”

Aqueous Renaissance marks Rogers’ first retrospective in Shanghai, gathering her most iconic works across two decades of experimentation and vision, and offering audiences the chance to see how an artist can remake photography into something painterly, cinematic, and profoundly human. Presented in a city built on its rivers and defined by constant renewal, the exhibition finds a fitting home—one where the dialogue between water, history, and rebirth continues to shape both art and life.