Femina at Gallery 169

Femina at Gallery 169 by Aline SmithsonFebruary 20, 2026

Tomorrow, Gallery 169 in Santa Monica, California, opens the exhibition, FEMINA, curated and concepted by Sal Taylor Kydd. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 21st, from 5–8 PM and the gallery will be open for viewing on both Saturday and Sunday from 10 -4pm. Femina is a two-day pop-up exhibition featuring the work of nine female artists whose photographs explore the layered, evolving experience of womanhood through portraiture and self-portraiture.

Bringing together artists Jo Ann Chaus, Sarah Hadley, Alexandra De Furio, Shari Yantra Marcacci, Aline Smithson, Sal Taylor Kydd, Catherine Just, Erica Kelly Martin, and Jennifer McClure, Femina offers an intimate and expansive meditation on female identity—its contradictions, tenderness, strength, and transformation.

Female identity is a shifting kaleidoscope—an ever-turning constellation of roles, memories, and embodied experience. This exhibition brings together women artists whose work opens new ways of seeing and sensing womanhood, each exploring the complexities of the female form and the stories carried within it.

Through portraiture and self-portraiture, these photographers reclaim the gaze and turn it inward. Their images go beyond the objectified view of the female body and explore how it feels from within: the pulse of interiority, the terrain of longing, resilience, desire, and becoming.

How do we inhabit our bodies as women? What does it mean to translate an internal landscape—emotional, sensual, psychological—into the external language of the photograph? These works ask us to consider how the female self can be seen, felt, and understood when authored by those who live its truth. – Sal Taylor Kydd

Instagram: @alinesmithson @alexandra_defurio @cjust @ericakellymartin @jmcclurephoto @joann_chaus @sarahhadleystudio @sal.taylorkydd @shariyantra

©Alexandra De Furio, Day 10, From the series January, 2019

Alexandra De Furio shares:

During January 2019, I awoke each morning and constructed a self-portrait on the small white wall between my bed and an adjacent window, entering a daily ritual of reflection within the expanded consciousness of waking. Day after day, I met myself in the lens as a visual journal emerged—an exploration of darkness and light, hope after loss, and the tension between letting go and holding on. The series reflects the power of the feminine and the unfolding of a braver self.

©Aline Smithson, Lexie Turned, from Revisiting Beauty

Aline Smithson shares:

Revisiting Beauty is a series of portraits inspired by portrait paintings of the twentieth century. This work is part of a larger project that examines connections of color, landscape, pose, and object as a way to reconsider the formal expression of the photographic portrait and give a nod to classic painterly sensibilities. The subjects are photographed against a colorful backdrop completed with a landscape I have captured, either in China or California. The result is a feminization of the landscape and a more painterly approach to creating photographs.

©Catherine Just, The Ache, from Chasing Fog : Learning How to Breathe

Catherine Just shares:

“Chasing Fog” explores love, loss, and what lives in between them — the unsaid, the unseen, the things that slip through your fingers if you’re not paying attention. Working with Polaroid and hand-stitching, I create tactile poems from the intangible: the subtle language of longing, memory, and the deep human ache to call someone home.

©Erica Kelly Martin, Artemis, from A Bee in the Rose

Erica Kelly Martin shares:

The series was inspired by literary works, such as Circe and Stone Blind, which retell classical myths and stories from the perspective of women who were once peripheral. These works prompted me to consider which archtypes I had accepted and whose perspectives shaped me. The stories we tell shape identity, expectation, and consequence. With these images, I propose a different narrative. By inverting tonal conventions, I offer another way of seeing, and by emphasizing gesture over environment, the myths enter the present.

©Jennifer McClure, Untitled, from “How Easily We Are Undone”

Jennifer McClure shares:

“How Easily We Are Undone” tells the story of my complicated path to and through motherhood. I never expected to be a mother, let alone parent through a pandemic. These photographs dive into the loss of self and boundaries of those years, as well as the constantly shifting identities we inhabit as we leave that closeness behind.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Outside In

Jo Ann Chaus shares:

In these images, a subset of the Conversations with Myself body of work, soon to be published as Unspoken, Chaus embodies a range of female stereotypes and archetypes—figures shaped by inherited expectations and internalized roles, in which she pushes against the ideals of the devoted wife and self-sacrificing mother, regardless of the fact that she was a modern, professional woman, still tethered to her mother’s era. The characters are rooted in mid-twentieth-century domesticity, but radiate defiance and vulnerability beneath the polished facade.For Chaus, creating the images revealed the tension between who she was expected to be, who she was becoming, and what she was leaving behind.

©Sal Taylor Kydd, A Flickering

Sal Taylor Kydd shares:

In the Spring of 2024, I lost both my father and my brother. It was devastating period when I lost all sense of compass.

This project served as an antidote to the introspection and anguish that I was feeling. I began to look outside of myself again and reconnect with and find joy in, the beauty I saw around me.

When the world offers these glimmers, it demands we pay attention, drawing us outside of ourselves, and if only for a moment, we are healed, finding reconnection and meaning that allows us to once again, begin.

Sarah Hadley shares:

Close, Closer, Closest invites the viewer into the interior lives of women through torn, ripped, and painted photographs that hover between revelation and concealment.

Shari Yantra Marcacci shares:

After eighteen years in Los Angeles, and seven months into the pandemic, I returned to the Swiss town where I grew up — a place that felt at once familiar and foreign, stirring buried emotions and reviving childhood memories. Photography grounded me amid the emotional turbulence; turning the camera on myself became a healing gesture, resulting in dark, shadow-filled images poised on the threshold between who I was and who I am becoming. In years marked by collective and personal darkness, grief moved in waves — some days obscure, others revealing a faint trace of light that I chose to follow.

About the Curator: Sal Taylor Kydd

Maine-based photographic artist and writer whose work interweaves photography, poetry, and alternative processes to explore themes of memory, belonging, and the passage of time. Her distinctive fusion of visual and literary art draws from personal narratives and a deep connection to place.

Her fine art photographs have been exhibited extensively across the U.S. and internationally, with notable exhibitions in Barcelona, San Miguel de Allende, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, and most recently in New York and London. Her work has also been featured in publications such as Don’t Take Pictures Magazine, Lenscratch, Diffusion Annual, and The Hand Magazine.

Taylor Kydd is the author of several artist books that combine her poetry with her photography, held in prestigious collections including The Getty Museum, Bowdoin College, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England. Her most recent book, Crossing, explores the remote islands of Penobscot Bay, capturing the sense of isolation and timeless beauty in these unique coastal landscapes. Another recent publication, Yesterday, produced by Datz Press, reflects on themes of loss and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2024, Taylor Kydd was named a finalist in the Critical Mass photography competition, a recognition of her ongoing contributions to contemporary photography. She is also an experienced educator and workshop leader, conducting portfolio reviews and leading workshops with institutions such as Maine Media Workshops + College, Santa Fe Workshops, Palm Beach Photography, and Nord Photography in Norway. Sal also serves on the boards of Maine Media Workshops and College in Rockport, as well as the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle.

Originally from the UK, she holds a BA in Modern Languages from Manchester University and an MFA in Photography from Maine Media College. She now lives and works in Rockport, Maine.

Taylor Kydd is represented by The Page Gallery in Rockport, Alta Vista Arts and The Photographic Gallery in San Miguel, MX.

Tags: Alexandra De Furio, Aline Smithson, and Jennifer McClure, Catherine Just, Erica Kelly Martin, Jo Ann Chaus, Sal Taylor Kydd, Saly Taylor Kydd, Sarah Hadley, Shari Yantra Marcacci, Women