Carol Anne McChrystal: Export Quality

Main Gallery, September 9 – December 10, 2026

Carol Anne McChrystal: Export Quality

Carol Anne McChrystal: Export Quality invites reflection on the entanglement of land and livelihood, shelter and home, and cultural continuity and connection. Inspired by weavers and handicraft workers in the Philippines, and drawing on her own diasporic background, McChrystal presents a selection of handwoven objects that visualize the material conditions of Filipinos in the homeland and overseas. 

An archipelago made up of more than 7,000 islands and islets with vast forests, volcanic mountains, and river systems, the Philippines is rich in natural beauty and cultural heritage and possesses substantial natural resources. Yet, for all its abundance, Philippine society remains heavily dependent on the import of basic commodities and the export of raw materials, agricultural products, and cheap labor. This import-dependent, export-oriented framework was first developed by Spanish colonial rule (1565-1898) which imposed feudalism, land-grabbing, and mass poverty on the Philippines. With the establishment of the hacienda system in the 18th and 19th centuries, native Filipinos were increasingly forced to cultivate crops for export to overseas markets, especially sugar. U.S. colonialism intensified the hacienda system and raw materials exports and structured the economy on foreign capital and goods, crushing local handicrafts and manufactures.

Despite gaining formal independence from the U.S. in 1946, today the Philippines remains a U.S. semi-colony bound to neoliberal policies that enrich global capital, undermine domestic growth, and keep wages low. Millions of Filipinos live in urban poor communities, as landless peasants, or leave home to become overseas migrant workers hoping to send money back to their families. Millions still migrate permanently from their homeland and become part of the diasporic community. 

Within this context, the phrase “Export Quality” serves as a metaphor for the mechanisms at work behind economic and cultural dispossession of the Filipino people. “Export quality is a phrase weavers in the Philippines sometimes use to describe weavings of a higher quality to be exported versus the kind of weavings they make to be sold in the market, or palengke,” says McChrystal. Under these circumstances, the weaver’s ancestral connection to their traditional handicraft is diminished as it becomes increasingly a source of severely underpaid export-based livelihood. 

McChrystal brings these relations into sharp focus with her visually seductive objects which, through their material form, make visible the often-unseen structures underpinning economic production and social reproduction under neocolonial conditions. McChrystal sources many of her materials directly from the Philippines where she forages discarded plastics, collects natural elements, and purchases market commodities and souvenirs. When recombined through the weaving process, the resulting objects embody contradictions wherein cheap, disposable materials and centuries-long geologic processes converge. Natural materials such as pandan leaves and Pangasinan salt tell of the ancestral traditions and natural wealth of the Philippines; junk food sachets and plastic bottles and bags signify the widespread poverty imposed upon the resource-rich, super-exploited Philippine landscape; mylar emergency blankets tell of the harsh conditions migrants face when forced overseas to find work; and blue tarp echoes the precarity of shelter when climate catastrophe hits vulnerable peasant and urban poor communities starved of resources and neglected in disaster aid distribution.

Many of the works take the form of the banig, traditional handwoven mats of the Philippines commonly used for sleeping, sitting, and creating a space for gathering and ritual. Typically woven using pandan leaves or other plant fibers native to the Philippines, the banig is a symbol of land and home that establishes a bond between the Philippines and Filipino overseas communities. McChrystal titles these works pasalubong, which refers to the practice of gift giving to celebrate the safe return home of a loved one. Woven with nontraditional materials while retaining their traditional use as shelter-providing banig, McChrystal’s pasalubong express at once both the severed ties diasporic communities and migrant workers experience as well as their enduring connection, resilience, and relentless fight for social justice. In one pasalubong, McChrystal recreates a banner reading “Welga Kami,” or “We’re on Strike,” held by striking workers in the Philippines demanding better working conditions and higher wages.

At the exhibition’s center, Walang Buwan III (The Drowned World), a space blanketed by a largescale banig, invites visitors to gather and engage in collective reflection and discussion about the root causes of the problems facing the Philippines, Filipino diasporic communities and immigrant communities more broadly, the urgency for collective action, and the interconnectedness of social movements across the globe. Most importantly, it is a space for envisioning what alternative people-centered futures might look like and how to achieve them.

Carol Anne McChrystal: Export Quality is organized by Chief Curator Erin Stout, PhD, and the staff of Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum. 

Carol Anne McChrystal: Export Quality is accompanied by a series of enriching educational programs. For more information visit our programs page.