CHAIRMEN’S GALLERY, MAIN LEVEL

Rowena Federico Finn’s mixed media work meticulously combines wide-ranging materials including capiz shells, piña fabric, found images, and historical texts to explore experiences of cultural displacement and histories of colonialism. Drawing on her Filipina background and her upbringing in Virginia, Finn considers the ways that cultural values are reflected and shaped by shared narratives.

In Finn’s work, found materials like vintage maps, fairytale illustrations, and historical texts represent these shared narratives. Fairytales are circulated and passed down from one generation to the next, communicating a set of common values and moral instructions. Maps present a different type of guidance. They transmit seemingly neutral information about the earth’s geographic characteristics and sociopolitical boundaries, but undeniably present a specific perspective, from a particular moment in time. More recently, Finn has incorporated historical texts, like the US Constitution, into her work, emphasizing the ways these texts work to create a shared narrative of national identity.

Finn incorporates these images and texts into quilt-like formations created with capiz shells and piña fabric, the two major exports of the Philippines. Like Finns’ other materials, quilts are a cultural form that transmits knowledge from one generation to the next. As the child of Filipino immigrants, Finn felt alienated from the cultural traditions of the American South, like quilt-making, yet also out of touch with the cultural life of the Philippines and the Filipino-diasporic community. In [fab-ri-keyt], Finn brings together these disparate influences to tell new stories. She highlights the ways that cultural narratives are created through storytelling, texts, material culture, and image-making and also suggests ways new stories, histories, and common values can be created.

Rowena Federico Finn: [fab-ri-keyt] takes place as part of MoCA Arlington’s SOLOS 2026, part of the Museum’s long-running SOLOS exhibition program. Launched in 1988, SOLOS features solo exhibitions by artists based in the Mid-Atlantic region who are working at the forefront of contemporary art.