Marsi Caraballo

(MFT) Miami Fiber Triennial 2026, “Memories Woven into the City”
Curated by Shirley Moreira, Juried by Carol Damian

June 11-July 24, 2026 | Miami International Fine Arts MIFA
FAMA @fiberartmiamiassociation, MIFA @mifamiami

Memories Woven into the City

Brings together a group of textile-based practices that understand the city and the nation as living constructs shaped by memory, displacement, belonging, and shared experience. Presented within the framework of the 250th anniversary of the United States, the exhibition shifts attention away from official historical narratives to focus on the intimate stories that, woven together, form the social fabric of the country. Each work functions as a fragment of memory, connecting the personal and the collective while revealing how places are shaped as much by individual experiences as by the broader historical processes that define them.

Through weaving, stitching, knotting, embroidery, and material interventions, the artists explore the many ways identity is formed within a diverse and constantly evolving society. The works address themes of migration, cultural heritage, gender identity, family memory, labor, landscape, and community, approaching the nation not as a fixed entity but as a space of continuous negotiation, transformation, and renewal. In this context, the city emerges as a metaphor for the textile itself: an intricate network of voices, journeys, and experiences that intersect, overlap, and reshape one another.

The artworks presented in this exhibition demonstrate how fiber transcends its material condition to become language, archive, and symbolic territory. Each thread carries traces of personal and collective histories, geographic and emotional movements, and relationships forged across time. Textile becomes a means of preserving what often remains absent from official accounts: everyday experiences, acts of care, inherited memories, and the strategies of resilience and adaptation that have contributed to the shaping of contemporary American life.

In Memories Woven into the City, the nation is understood as an ever-evolving tapestry of interconnected stories. Rather than offering a singular definition of identity or belonging, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the diverse experiences that compose the American collective imagination and on the ways individuals and communities continuously participate in the making of the places they inhabit. Through fiber, memory becomes visible, and the city emerges as a living archive of the countless narratives that sustain it.

Shirley Moreira