September 6 - October 26, 2025
Shanghai, China – ART LABOR Gallery is honored to present Aqueous Renaissance, a major 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.
Given the current circumstances of constantly evolving China–US relations, art continues to provide a steady bridge for dialogue and understanding across geographical and cultural distances. Hawaiian-born American artist Christy Lee Rogers stands at the center of this exchange, her work embodies light, water, and movement creating a language that transcends borders. Growing up in the center of the Pacific ocean, between East and West, Rogers was born to carry the kind and welcoming island spirit of Hawaiian seas into the global cultural milieu with her Baroque-inspired underwater photography, offering a vision of humanity that is at once universal and deeply personal. As tensions rise between the two nations, her art demonstrates how creativity can serve as something unifying and positive —illuminating our shared vulnerabilities, our beauty, and our potential for an eternal connection beyond politics.
In her native 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.
CHRISTY LEE ROGERS is an internationally celebrated visual artist known for her pioneering underwater photography. Her work has been commissioned by James Cameron for Avatar: The Way of Water and Disney, featured in Apple campaigns, and exhibited worldwide. She was awarded Open Photographer of the Year at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards, and her works are housed in both public and private collections across the globe.
Founded in 2006, ART LABOR Gallery has established itself as one of Shanghai’s leading contemporary art spaces, recognized for introducing international artists to China while championing innovative new voices from the region. The gallery has built a reputation for curating exhibitions that are both conceptually rigorous and visually compelling, with a focus on cross-cultural dialogue and experimentation across mediums. Over nearly two decades, Art Labor has presented projects that bridge art, design, and film, becoming a vital platform in Shanghai’s dynamic cultural landscape and a touchstone for audiences seeking globally connected perspectives in contemporary art.
https://www.artlaborgallery.com
