Casey Kaplan
Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something is on view from July 24, 2026 through February 28, 2027 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Blurring the boundaries between photography and sculpture, the art of Marlo Pascual (b. 1972, Nashville; d. 2020, Philadelphia) transforms what is familiar into something uncanny, prompting deeper contemplation. Using anonymous pictures sourced from thrift stores and their online counterparts, Pascual used techniques of enlargement, fragmentation, and obfuscation to upend viewers’ expectations. While these alterations can be humorous, there is also an implied discomfort in the abrupt cropping of limbs, faces obscured by objects, or physical destruction of images by shattering, tearing, or folding.
Through her interventions, Pascual exaggerated and highlighted the artifice of these found images. Frequently encasing the enlarged images in thick Plexiglas and pairing them with common yet unexpected objects, Pascual gave them new life and a newly charged aesthetic function. By enlarging them well beyond their intended size, to a scale commensurate with furniture or sculpture, she asserted the physicality of the images, giving them volume and form.
Featuring seventeen of Pascual’s works made between 2009 and 2014, this exhibition demonstrates the artist’s methods of recontextualizing her original source material. Through dramatic changes to scale, adding repurposed objects, and other transformations, Pascual created works that urge viewers to see everyday imagery from a new perspective.
For more information, please visit the NMWA’s website.