Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something
Marlo Pascual (b. 1972, Nashville; d. 2020, Philadelphia) created works that amuse, confuse, and provoke by dramatically recontextualizing anonymous vintage photographs and found objects. The artist transformed her thrift-store source material through enlargement, fragmentation, obfuscation, and the addition of external elements—approaches that interrupt any sense of nostalgia or familiarity. Pascual’s use of found imagery places her in the tradition of the “Pictures” generation. Beginning in the 1970s, these artists, including Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), Sherrie Levine (b. 1947), and Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), used pre-existing imagery from popular culture and advertising in their artwork. Similarly, Pascual created works whose meaning takes shape in the space between the original context of the images and the artist’s interventions.
Drawn from NMWA’s collection, this presentation of seventeen of Pascual’s works demonstrates her creative innovation and preserves the legacy of an artist whose career was cut short by her death from cancer in 2020.
Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and generously supported by the members of NMWA.
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Changing the Subject
Pascual’s work transforms what is familiar—what might even evoke nostalgia—into something uncanny, challenging viewers’ expectations and prompting deeper contemplation. The artist spoke of choosing source imagery that she felt was “overtly constructed,” such as vintage studio portraits, yearbook photos, and advertisements. She saw these images as fragments in and of themselves: “I think about the construction of the image—how it’s a fragment, and not the whole story, not the truth with a capital ‘T.’” By superimposing seemingly arbitrary objects and vignettes over an anonymous 1970s-era studio portrait, Pascual emphasized her manipulation of the photographs. By extension, this action prompts the viewer to consider the inherent artifice of the original image.
The eight artworks in this gallery share the same artwork details.
Untitled, 2013
Digital C-print; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
More Than the Sum of Its Parts
Marlo Pascual enlarged her vintage source images and frequently encased them in thick Plexiglas, often pairing them with common yet unexpected objects. By giving photographs volume and form commensurate with furniture or sculpture, Pascual imbued these images with new life and a newly charged aesthetic function. Hovering between whimsy and absurdity, these works offer viewers an unexpected way to engage (both physically and conceptually) with elements that are otherwise banal.
Since many of Pascual’s fragmentary images depict women, her works can also be seen as commentary on the objectification of the female body. Her transformation of the images into large, stationary objects—often juxtaposed with domestic items such as lamps or candleholders—brings the absurdity of the objectification of women to its inevitable, irrational conclusion.
Untitled, 2011
Digital C-print mounted on Plexiglas with Sintra backing; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2009
Digital C-print and wood; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2014
Digital C-print, Plexiglas, and lamp; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2014
Digital C-print, Plexiglas, stone, and red oak shelf; Gift of Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2011
Digital C-print, brass candle sconces, and white candles; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
Piecing It Together
Marlo Pascual altered her source imagery in myriad ways: by abruptly cropping limbs, obscuring faces with objects, or by shattering, tearing, or folding. While this transformation can be humorous at times, there is also an implied violence to many of these actions. In the images in this gallery, Pascual’s interventions have the effect of implying an underlying narrative for each work, hinting at an unknowable event that precipitated the action.
The destruction or alteration of a physical image, once a marker of strong emotion, is now obsolete in our digital world. Pascual created these works at a moment when the shift from analog to digital was all but complete, using a deceptively minimalist approach that provokes complex questions about images and how we relate to them.
Untitled, 2011
Digital C-print with Plexiglas mount; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2014
Laser-cut digital C-print on Plexiglas; Gift of Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2010
Two digital C-prints mounted on acrylic and Sintra; Gift of Tony Podesta Collection
Untitled, 2011
Digital C-print on watercolor paper; Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection
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Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something
