From November 01, 2025 to November 30, 2025
Maybe to be a woman is to be hollowed out – scrape her bile into the bin and bend her over. Fuck her shell and sell her to your god. Or maybe to be a woman is to sing. Maybe she will smile at a sonogram and savor sweet dreams wrapped in fairytales.
GUTTER DUCHESS is a photographic series that knows every woman is two and to be discovered. This series follows myself and significant women in my life. The essence of their character is magnetic and undeniable, in a brutal embrace and a welcoming space that is – emerging womanhood. GUTTER DUCHESS is a matriarchal power bound ferociously by love.
Curator: Sandrine Hermand-Grisel
F. Bessma Rhea is her father’s second-born daughter (first-born son), her mother’s last line of defense at the dinner table, and her sister’s favorite fun house mirror. She is the first person to speak in a crowded elevator and the last person to get a word in edgewise. Bessma has always been a big talker, but her preferred method of communication is using the visual language of photography.
F. Bessma Rhea graduated from Montana State University in 2025, achieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Integrated Lens Based Media from the School of Film and Photography. Although Bessma spent the last four and a half years in Bozeman, Montana, Bessma was born, raised, and is now currently residing in San Diego, California. Her photographic journey has encompassed an exploration of various mediums, ranging from silver gelatin prints and digital flash photography, to alternative process and chromogenic printing in the color darkroom. From this exploration she learned to cultivate her aesthetic, her relationship to photography, and to refine and utilize her voice.
In her own reflection, she sees herself as a detective and a scientist, but to the outside world, she is an artist and a photographer. With her camera she will continue to investigate and theorize about the world she’s a part of, and where she fits in. But in the moments she’s not photographing, she enjoys filthy explicit music – and classic literature.
