The work in the exhibition invites the viewer to imagine breathing air through the dirt, the debris, and the present-day challenges rooted in the wounds of the past. In Nancy Nguyen's Fish Jump (2024) and Kaela Han's the glade (2024), the artists ponder the sensory elements of time, highlighting its unfolding, guiding to clearer moments. Grace Jin’s Wandering Womb (2024) reconsiders Robert Riggs’ Psychopathic Ward (1939) to question the medical and male gaze, the male gaze begging the question of who is pathologized and what it means to be well-adjusted in an ill society.

Petrichor explores identity and otherness, particularly within the liminal space of being a multi-racial and multicultural woman living in the United States. Maya Fuji’s Self Reflection (2022) presents a seated figure floating in the clouds, her shiny black hair flowing through her fingers, her lips and nipples imbued with dabs of scarlet reflected in the clouds and butterflies around her. It is only once the viewer is close enough to make eye contact with Fuji’s dream-like figure that one sees the tears in her eyes. Lucia Aguilar’s Sitting, Dreaming (2024) refuses to meet the viewer’s gaze, too preoccupied basking in the comfort of her fabrics and femininity. Grace Jin’s two feminine figures in Su Nü Jing (2024) confront the viewer through the playful and inviting expressions of their movements.

The exhibition is a reimagination of the darker elements of femininity thoughtfully recontextualized through a lens of the triumph that comes from carving a space for self-reflection and reverie.