As the United States prepares to commemorate America 250, this exhibition positioned the act of stitching as a metaphor for cultural survival, diasporic connection, and intergenerational memory. It showcased the artistic visions of twelve remarkable women: Aleli Egües, Bella Cardim Faro, Deborah Rosenthal, Fernanda Froes, Mabela, Macarena Zilveti, Maite Izquierdo, Marcia Marconi, Marilyn Valiente, Mila Hajjar, Mirele Volkart, and Paola Mondolfi—each one weaving her own narrative into the greater fabric of the Americas.
Rather than impose a singular theme, Threading the Americas offered a curatorial space of openness, allowing meaning to emerge organically from the artists’ hands. What arose—inevitably, powerfully—were echoes of migration, ancestry, womanhood, labor, and longing. Through embroidery, dye, weaving, quilting, and mixed-media interventions, these artists revealed the layered stories held in fiber: stories of wounds and healing, of uprooting and belonging, of silence turned into form.
This exhibition also marked a renewed chapter in MoCA-Americas’ evolving collaboration with FAMA. Our first encounter took place in 2022–2023 with “Subverting Materials: Textile and Fiber Art by Women Artists,” curated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig. That show, which brought together nine women working at the intersection of craft and contemporary art, was part of the museum’s broader mission to reframe traditional hierarchies and uplift the voices of women artists. There, as now, fiber was not just material—it was message, metaphor, and method.
Threading the Americas extended that commitment with greater scope and ambition. It became not only a showcase of technical mastery and conceptual rigor, but a profound meditation on the political and poetic possibilities of cloth. Each work on display became a thread in a transcontinental dialogue—one that affirmed the enduring relevance of textile art while grounding it in the lived experience of women.
On Tuesday, March 22, the exhibition was further enriched by a public conversation led by curator and art critic Adriana Herrera, whose insights into the feminist and diasporic resonances of the works provided visitors with deeper layers of understanding. Her reflections invited the audience to reconsider textiles not as decorative afterthoughts, but as vehicles of cultural knowledge, resistance, and intimacy.
The presence of FAMA at MoCA-Americas is not accidental. Born amid the social isolation of the 2020 pandemic, FAMA emerged as a platform for solidarity and creative reclamation. It gathered women from across the Americas—immigrants, daughters of immigrants, cultural nomads—and offered them a space to rethread their identities through art. That spirit aligns powerfully with the museum’s own transformation from an art center to a fully fledged museum: a process defined not by enclosure, but by expansion, exchange, and trust.
MoCA-Americas is committed to remaining an open and responsive institution, one that devotes space each year to traveling and temporary exhibitions, and to projects that place community, collaboration, and gender equity at their core. The Women in the Arts program is a pillar of that mission, and Threading the Americas from North to South stands as a luminous example of what can unfold when women come together—not just to exhibit, but to tell, to remember, and to create anew.
In the hands of these artists, fiber becomes language. Stitching becomes storytelling. Weaving becomes witness. And the museum becomes not just a site of display, but a living, breathing archive of the feminine creative impulse—multilingual, multicultural, and unstoppable.
On Tuesday, March 22, the exhibition was further enriched by a public conversation led by curator and art critic Adriana Herrera, whose insights into the feminist and diasporic resonances of the works provided visitors with deeper layers of understanding. Her reflections invited the audience to reconsider textiles not as decorative afterthoughts, but as vehicles of cultural knowledge, resistance, and intimacy.
The presence of FAMA at MoCA-Americas is not accidental. Born amid the social isolation of the 2020 pandemic, FAMA emerged as a platform for solidarity and creative reclamation. It gathered women from across the Americas—immigrants, daughters of immigrants, cultural nomads—and offered them a space to rethread their identities through art. That spirit aligns powerfully with the museum’s own transformation from an art center to a fully fledged museum: a process defined not by enclosure, but by expansion, exchange, and trust.
MoCA-Americas is committed to remaining an open and responsive institution, one that devotes space each year to traveling and temporary exhibitions, and to projects that place community, collaboration, and gender equity at their core. The Women in the Arts program is a pillar of that mission, and Threading the Americas from North to South stands as a luminous example of what can unfold when women come together—not just to exhibit, but to tell, to remember, and to create anew.
In the hands of these artists, fiber becomes language. Stitching becomes storytelling. Weaving becomes witness. And the museum becomes not just a site of display, but a living, breathing archive of the feminine creative impulse—multilingual, multicultural, and unstoppable.
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor, and the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners.
The Kendall Art Cultural Center (KACC), dedicated the past six years to the preservation and promotion of contemporary art and artists, and to the exchange of art and ideas throughout Miami and South Florida, as well as abroad. Through an energetic calendar of exhibitions, programs, and its collections, KACC provides an international platform for the work of established and emerging artists, advancing public appreciation and understanding of contemporary art.
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The Rodríguez collection is a blueprint of Cuban art and its diaspora. Within the context of the new MoCA-Americas the collection becomes an invaluable visual source for Diaspora identity. It represents a different approach to art history to try to better understand where we come from to better know where we are heading.
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