Bending water: demonstrates how imagery of women holding, hoisting and carrying water vessels imposes identities and societal expectations Event closes end of August

By Gazette Staff

August 10th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

This event closes at the end of August.

Given our relationship to water – without it we wouldn’t be here, this should give a perspective on water you may not have had.

Worth the time – AGB is a great place to spend a few hours in the hot, muggy weather we are experiencing.

Drawing from digital archives and physical postcards, Leila Fatemi explores the connection between photographic representation and props, which often symbolize societal status.

Vessels that bend water

In A Vessel to Bend Water, she critically engages with the historical representation of women from the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region in photography, particularly in Orientalist imagery, by focusing on the vessel—a recurring motif that reinforces colonial ideologies and constrains women’s roles.

The vessel is often used as a metaphor for confinement, while also suggestive of ideas related to domestic labour, nourishment, and gathering. Photographic depictions of vessels underscore broader issues of gendered representation and systemic marginalization and, in the histories of women from SWANA regions that were, in the nineteenth century, problematically depicted in opposition to the West and in relation to European powers as “the Orient”—highlight how women’s bodies were defined and controlled through the lens of colonial power. A Vessel to Bend Water demonstrates how imagery of women holding, hoisting, carrying, and leaning on water vessels was frequently used to undermine women’s agency, subjecting them to imposed identities and societal expectations.

The project spans various mediums, including collage, textiles, cyanotypes, lenticular prints, ceramics, and photolithography on clay, reinterpreting and disrupting conventional forms of photographic representation. These interventions challenge the objectification of women by questioning the power dynamics and limitations imposed on their bodies. Through images drawn from Fatemi’s personal collection and the Getty Institute’s Ken and Jenny Jacobson Orientalist Photography Collection, the work engages in a dialogue with historical visual artifacts, emphasizing the need to deconstruct and reinterpret oppressive narratives. Using collage techniques like redaction, tearing, and erasure, Fatemi disrupts the preciousness of these images, forcing viewers to reconsider their implications.

The project spans various mediums, including collage, textiles, cyanotypes, lenticular prints, ceramics, and photolithography on clay, reinterpreting and disrupting conventional forms of photographic representation.

During a residency in the AGB clay studios from January to April 2025, Fatemi explored new methods of making and presenting her work for the exhibition. Working alongside the studio technicians and artist-educators, she further experimented with integrating printmaking techniques into her practice, merging photography with ceramics.

In addition to testing image manipulation, Fatemi began reimagining the idea of the vessel itself by pulling the form, as depicted in an archival image, and re-constructing it into a living object. Over the course of the exhibition, unfired clay vessels will slowly disintegrate under the weight of water, returning them to a raw state. Water vessels, once muted in photographers’ studios, now become active agents in their own story. By erasing the utility of the physical vessel, Fatemi underscores its futility in the original archives, breaking down what constitutes a photographic prop to erode the historical narrative.

The Art Gallery of Burlington is supported by the City of Burlington, Ontario Arts Council, and Ontario Trillium Foundation. The AGB’s learning programming has been sponsored by the Burlington Foundation and the incite Foundation for the Arts. The 50th Anniversary Exhibitions have been sponsored by the J.P. Bickell Foundation.