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Mason Exhibitions and
A Seat At The Table

In Conversation with “How We See What They Saw” a Fenwick Gallery Exhibition

"We partnered with GMU’s Fenwick Gallery, highlighting 11 female photographers from their exhibition How We See What They Saw (Sept 15-Nov 21, 2025), a

customized reading room aimed to create a space for audiences to encounter, appreciate, and revalue the indispensable role of women in shaping the past,

present, and future of the photobook.

The experience involved a slowed-down ceremonial setting of the table and an extended invitation welcoming people passing by to sit with us and learn about

the women represented on the plates in front of them. We offered our guests tea, spoke briefly about the project, our mission, and some of the highlighted women. We also asked guests questions about themselves and the women in their lives. Some shared memories and spoke to us about their significance. What resulted was a fulfilling and inspiring conversation.

The Women at Our Table

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Learn more about each of these women and their legacies in our recipe book that we provided participants with, titled "Recipes and Rememberance"

Our Lived Experience

During our first installation of “A Seat At The Table,” we held the event for two hours in Fenwick Gallery, located in Fenwick Library on the George Mason University campus. The event was held in collaboration with "How We See What They Saw: A Reading Room of Photobooks by Women,” which explored the creative achievements of women and nonbinary photographers. The exhibit invited the audience to engage with photobooks and understand their works. We chose to partner with this exhibit because of its mission of highlighting the works of women and their contributions to the field of photography aligned closely with our own vision. “A Seat At The Table” invited participants to rethink the phrase "women belong in the kitchen" by turning it into a celebration of strength, tradition, and legacy. With an interactive display of custom-designed ceramics and recipe books, we pay tribute to the women who have quietly shaped history. We received an audience of twelve people who represented a range of ages and disciplines. Some of the audience were artists, historians, and curators, while others came to the table due to an interest in the experience.


We received an extremely positive response to the entirety of our exhibit. Once people took a seat at the table, we invited them to enjoy tea and learn about the women on the chinaware in front of them. In front of each audience member, there was a full set of chinaware with a dinner plate, saucer plate, and then a tea cup, where each one had a unique portrait of a woman alongside her name. When we spoke to the audience members, they all liked the idea and symbolism within the project. Many of them inquired about how we were hoping to expand the project and continue to develop it, offering their own inputs and opportunities that we could contribute to. In the act of the exhibit, we engaged in authentic conversation about the women, their history, and whether there were women in their own lives who left a lasting impact on them. Our conversations morphed from historical to philosophical to an artistic journey where the focus was to understand more about the women. One of the intentional acts we did was to work to curate an archive of women, and we received a lot of active participation. The conversation and the entirety of the exhibit were focused on authentic, non-rushed acts of listening and hearing one another.

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