Washington, D.C.—The work of Marlo Pascual, a prescient and thought-provoking American artist who stretched the boundaries of photography, will be on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) from July 24, 2026, through February 28, 2027. Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something, the first solo museum exhibition of Pascual’s work in 15 years, introduces viewers to an artist who developed a practice of manipulating found images, creating works that blur the line between photography and sculpture. Pascual worked in the tradition of the “Pictures” generation of artists, such as Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, and recognition of her work was just gaining momentum when she died of cancer at the age of 48 in 2020.
Marlo Pascual (1972 to 2020) created photo-based works that amuse, confuse, and provoke viewers. Pascual primarily used found imagery of anonymous and often glamorous women from vintage or thrifted sources, which she then dramatically remixed or recontextualized with the addition of sculptural elements. Drawn from NMWA’s collection, Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something presents 17 of Pascual’s works made between 2009 and 2014.
“The exhibition not only introduces visitors to the work of this visionary artist but also preserves Pascual’s legacy,” said Virginia Treanor, NMWA Senior Curator. “We are proud to be ongoing champions of her work, which, through the transformations of seemingly familiar images, challenges us to see the world around us in new ways.”
Through her interventions, Pascual exaggerated and highlighted the artifice of the vintage images she chose. Frequently encasing the enlarged images in thick Plexiglas and pairing them with common yet unexpected objects, Pascual gave them a new aesthetic function. By enlarging them well beyond their intended size, Pascual asserted the physicality of the images, giving them volume and form, akin to sculpture.
Pascual spoke of choosing imagery that she felt was “overtly constructed,” such as studio portraits, yearbook photos, and advertisements. The artist noted, “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.’”
Pascual’s work transforms what is familiar and even nostalgic into something uncanny, prompting deeper contemplation of what is often taken for granted. Heads, hands, arms, and legs appear disconnected from the rest of the body and become compositional elements of the larger whole. Her process, a creative metamorphosis, can be unsettling, as viewers perceive an emotional tension between beauty and destruction.
In a series of eight photographs in the exhibition, a portrait of a young blond woman is repeatedly obscured by objects and shadows, including a hand, a spiderweb, a table, and flowers. Whether intended as humorous or sinister, these incongruous elements call attention to the artist’s manipulation and, by extension, the artifice of the original image. In another work, Pascual flipped a bust-length portrait of a woman upside down and positioned the head and neck at a ninety-degree angle beside the torso. She then placed a table lamp directly on top of the woman’s face, obscuring it completely. In this way, the portrait of the woman becomes the physical support for this common household item, relegating her to the same inanimate status.
“As many of Pascual’s fragmentary images are of women, it is hard not to view her works as commentary on the objectification of women that such ‘overtly constructed’ imagery sustains,” notes Treanor. “The transformation of the images into large, stationary objects, which often serve as support for domestic objects like lamps or candleholders, seems to bring the absurdity of ‘woman as object’ to its inevitable, irrational conclusion.”
As Pascual explained her approach to found objects, “I’m not destroying them. I like to think I’m giving them a new life.”
About Marlo Pascual
Tennessee-born and Philadelphia-based artist Marlo Pascual obtained her MFA from the Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia) in 2007. Despite having applied to study photography, her approach to the medium shifted when she experimented with pouring paint over a photograph. She had solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute, New York, in 2009, and the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, in 2010. Her work was included in What Is a Photograph?, a 2014 survey at New York’s International Center of Photography. Work by Pascual is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Perez Art Museum, Miami.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs and online content, the museum inspires dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women and nonbinary artists and serves as a vital center for thought Leadership, community engagement and social change. NMWA addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to Light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today. The collection highlights a wide range of works in a variety of mediums by artists including Rosa Bonheur, Louise Bourgeois, Lalla Essaydi, Lavinia Fontana, Frida Kahlo, Hung Liu, Zanele Muholi, Faith Ringgold, Niki de Saint Phalle and Amy Sherald.
NMWA is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. It is open Tues. to Sun., 10 am to 5 pm, and closed on Mondays and select holidays. Admission is $16 for adults, $13 for D.C. residents, visitors 65 and over, students and educators, active-duty military and veterans, and visitors with a Native / Tribal Affiliation; and free for visitors 21 and under, visitors with disabilities, and SNAP/EBT card holders. Admission is free the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month.
For information, call 202-783-5000, visit nmwa.org, Broad Strokes blog, Facebook or Instagram.
Media Contact
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Katrina Weber Ashour, kweber@nmwa.org