Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington opens fall 2025 exhibitions
New exhibitions include the first museum survey of acclaimed Iranian-American painter Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, a three-artist exhibition featuring artists from the Venezuelan and Cuban diasporas, and a solo exhibition by resident artist Joey Enríquez
ARLINGTON, VA. – Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is proud to announce the opening of its fall 2025 exhibitions. The new exhibitions run from September 27, 2025 to January 25, 2026.
The opening celebration, Art After Hours, will take place on Saturday, October 4, 5pm-8pm, with exhibiting artists in attendance, open studios with MoCA Arlington’s resident artists, and a cash bar. The opening celebration also coincides with MoCA Arlington’s fall art market and the 2025 Arlington ArtWalk.
MoCA Arlington’s fall 2025 exhibitions include the first major museum exhibition to survey the work of Iranian-American painter Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, a three-artist exhibition featuring work by artists from the Cuban and Venezuelan diasporas, curated by Fabiola R. Delgado, a solo exhibition by MoCA Arlington resident artist Joey Enríquez, and, in the Jenkins Community Gallery, a solo exhibition by Hiromi Isobe, an artist and longtime arts educator in Arlington County.
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Here the waving flag. Here the other world. is the first presentation of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi’s work that highlights the full breadth of her practice, bringing together artwork from the last fifteen years. The exhibition builds on MoCA Arlington’s long relationship with the artist, who was a resident artist at the museum from 2012 to 2018.
Over the last fifteen years, Ilchi has cultivated a unique painting practice that merges the conventions and techniques of Western abstraction with the visual language of Persian art and architecture. Ilchi brings new energy and perspectives to material and thematic traditions from throughout art history, including the practice of abstraction and the role of the sublime in contemporary art. Through her work, Ilchi has developed a singular vision, grounded in material proficiency and nourished through a uniquely poetic visual language.
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Here the waving flag. Here the other world. is curated by Blair Murphy, Senior Curator + Director of Exhibitions, Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog with essays by Blair Murphy and Eleanor Jones Harvey, Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as an extended interview with the artist by independent curator Laura Roulet.
Curated by guest curator Fabiola R. Delgado, Tactics for Remembering includes sculpture, video, and installation by Amalia Caputo, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Lisu Vega in collaboration with Carlos Pedreañez. In the face of migration, political rupture, and cultural erasure, Tactics for Remembering invites viewers to reflect on the notion of home as a fluid and emotional space—shaped by memory, by the body, and by absence.
Conceived as part of MoCA Arlington’s Global Spotlight series, the exhibition intentionally “bends the frame,” expanding the lens beyond national boundaries toward an affective geography: Cuba-Zuela. This neologism recognizes a historical and cultural kinship between Cuba and Venezuela, two nations bound by the Caribbean Sea, marked by parallel struggles, and linked by two sister diasporas. Through this grouping, the exhibition resists narrow nation-based curatorial models and instead honors the porousness of Caribbean identity and the solidarities born out of necessity and generosity.
The solo exhibition as i look towards what could have been mine is artist Joey Enríquez’s elegiac ode to the desert of the American Southwest, a place synonymous with the artist’s personal ethnography, familial ancestry, and, for the artist, a place where their soul is at rest. Taking viewers to the edge of ruins, both metaphorical and literal, Enríquez alludes to the deserts’ innate expansiveness through poetic prose, printmaking, sculpture, and found object installations.
Enríquez’s abstracted desert revels in paradox. In the artist’s work, the desert is presented as both unforgiving and romantic: a place of last resorts, desolation, and death; but also a place lush with awe-inspiring grace and tranquility. Contrasting the remains of a ruined adobe structure with a broken stained glass window that looks out onto the vastness of an open pit mine, Enríquez places sun-bleached fragments of prose declarations atop hand-printed landscape vistas. These writings—all original and often confessional—allude to love, fear, and memories of the desert from the artist’s childhood. In its construction and tone, as i look towards what could have been mine aspires to the scale and reverence of a cathedral: monumental and imposing, yet intimate.
In her solo exhibition Can I See?, artist and educator Hiromi Isobe works across media including painting, mixed media, fiber and sculpture to give form to the invisible systems that shape our world. Charting Isobe’s interest in scientific study, spirituality, and existential queries, Can I See? is both a question and a practice: an ongoing search for understanding that offers answers through the act of creation.
Rather than seeking clear answers, Isobe approaches artmaking as an inquiry, guided by her innate sense of wonder and sensitivity. Using the recurring motif of the circle, layered and highly tactile materials, and fancifully imagined characters, Isobe poetically visualizes emotional states and the threads that connect individuals to the cosmos. In its quest to express the ineffable, Can I See? is both a question and an invitation: to pause, reflect, and imagine what lies beyond the visible.
PROGRAMS
Art After Hours
Saturday, October 4, 5pm-8pm
Join MoCA Arlington to celebrate the opening of our new fall exhibitions! Inside the museum, view the new exhibitions, meet exhibiting artists, visit resident artist studios, and enjoy a drink from the cash bar. Outside the museum, enjoy the Falling for Art Made in Arlington Market and visit local galleries and artist studios as part of the 2025 Arlington Art Walk.
Additional public programs to be announced soon.
FALL 2025 EXHIBITIONS
Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi: Here the waving flag. Here the other world.
On View: September 27, 2025 – January 25, 2026
Curated by Blair Murphy, MoCA Arlington Senior Curator + Director of Exhibitions
Main Level
Global Spotlight: Tactics for Remembering
On View: September 27, 2025 – January 25, 2026
Featured Artists: Amalia Caputo, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Lisu Vega in collaboration with Carlos Pedreañez
Curated by Fabiola R. Delgado, independent curator
Experimental & Truland Galleries, Lower Level
Joey Enríquez: as i look towards what could have been mine
On View: September 27, 2025 – January 25, 2026
Curated by Amanda Jirón-Murphy, MoCA Arlington Curator & Residency Program Manager
Wyatt Resident Artists Gallery, Upper Level
Hiromi Isobi: Can I See?
On View: October 4 – November 30, 2025
Curated by Amanda Jirón-Murphy, MoCA Arlington Curator & Residency Program Manager
Jenkins Community Gallery, Lower Level
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Reclining Liberty
Front Lawn
# # #
About Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington
The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that enriches community life by connecting the public with contemporary art and artists through exhibitions, education and public programs, and an artists-in-residence program. Located at 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA, the museum is open Wed.-Sun. 12-5pm. The museum has free on-site parking, is easy to reach by metro and bus, and is accessible. There is no admission fee to visit. For more information about our exhibitions and programming, visit mocaarlington.org. Follow us @mocaarlington.
